“I assure you that I am not in the least unhappy at having been jilted by your daughter ... it leaves me quite cold ... I don’t think I ever really wanted to marry Val very much ... we were much better friends before we tried to become engaged....”
Or, with a yet more devastating candour:
“I’ve been certain for days that I made a complete fool of myself by ever proposing marriage to Valeria....”
This surprisingly agile form of mental gymnastics was tempestuously interrupted by the Canon.
“For God’s sake, Owen, break down!” he groaned. “My boy, my boy, you’re safe with me. Forget that I’m Valeria’s father—think of me only as one who has known suffering—aye, and sin, too. Make a safety-valve of me—let yourself go. But I can bear this sham cynicism of yours no longer. It’s wrong, Owen, it’s wrong. True fortitude faces what lies before it, finds its Gethsemane, and rises, purged of bitterness. Break down—weep, nay, curse if you will, only cast open the floodgates. Let loose whatever devils possess your soul, you, the victim of treachery—let them loose, I say, and we will conquer them together.”
For an instant, all that Quentillian could do hardly sufficed to prevent his letting loose a violent fit of laughter.
He drove his teeth into his lower lip. It was his increasing perception of the Canon’s overwhelming misery that steadied him.
“Val has hurt me less than you think, sir,” he said gently at last. “I have sometimes thought that she and I had made a mistake.”
The Canon gazed at him with a pathetic unbelief.
“My unhappy child does not know what she has lost.”