She was silent a moment.
"In a way an injury done to oneself is easier to forgive than an injury done to somebody else——" she began.
Charles rudely interrupted.
"Painfully noble sentiment?" he enquired.
"Yes: perhaps it was. Let us be careful: we might die in the night if we became more edifying."
"And the real point is that Mr. Craddock's little plot didn't come off," said he. "At least that seems to me the most important thing."
For a moment their eyes met, and for that moment the huge underlying reality came close to the surface.
She smiled and nodded her assent to this.
"Leave it there," she said ... "and then, where were we? O, yes: then you came to copy the Reynolds. Up in my room, do you remember? And dear old Buz lay on the sofa and got worse and worse?"
She leaned back in her chair so that he could not see her face.