‘The worst of a good night,’ remarked her father, ‘is that you do not know it is good until it is over. The pleasure of it is as unreal as the pain of a regret. Personally I never regret anything. Fools regret, and even a knave can repent.’
Sophia stood there silent; the burden of what she had to say took from her the power of initiating trivialities; but her father went on, rasping like a file.
‘When a thing is done, it is done, and things for the most part do not produce any consequences at all, though people who have addled their brains with trivial thinking tell us that they do. Moralists and philosophers are the most shallow people in the world, for argument is ever less sound than conviction. This morning, Sophia, you look as if you were inclined to argue. Please don’t do that, or, if you must argue—I know it may happen to any of us—please go and argue in the passage, where I can’t hear you.’
Sophia sat down by the bedside.
‘I am not come to argue,’ she said; ‘but, father, I am come to talk. I am come to tell you something.’
‘Tell it, then,’ said Demetrius, with the composure of a tree.
‘It is this: I have a report from Berlin, and a question to ask you—— ’ and she stopped.
‘The message first, the question afterwards,’ said Prince Demetrius, and his composure seemed quite unshaken.
‘Professor Virchow has sent a most unfavourable report; your malady is malignant——’ and she stopped again.
‘Why the devil not say cancer, and have done with it?’ asked that man of iron.