"Please sit down," she begged, "and tell me about it. You mustn't despair like this all at once. I wonder if I could help!"
"No one can help," he told her grimly. "It is all finished and done with. I would rather not talk any more about it. I didn't come here to talk about it. I came to see you. So this is where you live!"
He looked around him, and for a moment he almost forgot the pain which was gnawing at his heart. It was such a simple, plainly furnished little room, so clean, so neat, so pathetically eloquent of poverty. She drew closer together the curtains which concealed her little chintz-covered bed, and came and sat down by his side.
"You know, you are rather a silly person," she whispered soothingly. "Wait for a time and perhaps things will look different. I know that Louise cares. Isn't that the great thing, after all?"
"I would like not to talk about it any more," said John. "Just now I cannot put what I feel into words. What remains is just this: I have been a fool, a sort of Don Quixote, building castles in Spain and believing that real men and women could live in them. I have expected the impossible in life. It is perhaps a good thing that I can see the truth now. I am going to climb down!"
She clasped her hands tighter around his arm. Her eyes sought his anxiously.
"But you mustn't climb down, John," she insisted. "You are so much nicer where you are, so much too good for the silly, ugly things. You must fight this in your own way, fight it according to your own standards. You are too good to come down—"
"Am I too good for you, Sophy?"
She looked at him, and her whole face seemed to soften. The light in her blue eyes was sweet and wistful. A bewildering little smile curled her lips.
"Don't be stupid!" she begged. "A few minutes ago I was looking out of my window and thinking what a poor little morsel of humanity I am, and what a useless, drifting life I have led. But that's foolish. Come now! What I want to persuade you to do is to go back to Cumberland for a time, and try hard—very hard indeed—to realize what it means to be a woman like Louise, with her temperament, her intense intellectual curiosity, her charm. Nothing could make Louise different from what she is—a dear, sweet woman and a great artist. And, John, I believe she loves you!"