"Without the least remorse, if he can't stop decently."
"To judge so vilely! If you cannot understand and appreciate the fact that Christopher isn't made of common clay, then the case is hopeless."
"Coarse clay or china clay, he's a callous, cruel devil to do what he is doing; and you can tell him so from me."
"I'm only sorry that you so hatefully misunderstand Christo."
For once the blind man let his anger run over. It had been boiling for many days, and now, before this attitude in Honor, he could restrain the explosion no more.
"Damn Christo!" he said. "Damn him for a poor, white-livered, whole cowardice of curs rolled into one! Your husband's worth a wilderness of his sort, and you ought to know it, and—there, I'll not say more. I blamed Myles first for being jealous of nought; now I blame him no more. Reason is with him. And though this boneless thing doesn't know better, you ought to, if only to credit your stock. What's come to you? What's sapped up all your old sense and self-respect?"
She stared at his wrath as at a new experience.
"I am unchanged," she answered, "though all the rest of my little world is going mad it seems. I have been misled and mistaken, if you are right, though I am not sure at all that you are. Certainly I thought after his illness, and the things he said to me then, that Myles was looking at this matter from my own rational stand-point. He grew sensible again—the old, wise Myles. But if you are correct in this monstrous belief, Myles must have set my mind at rest at the cost of his own peace. Yet could he hide that from me?"
"Not if your eyes were as they used to be. There must be no more rest at any rate—neither rest nor peace—till I'm proved right and the case is righted, or I'm shown wrong, when I'll not be backward in begging for forgiveness. Only remember, it's got to come from you—this clearing up. Myles will do nothing while he thinks your happiness is in blossom; he'll go on silently fretting his soul sour; and t'other will do nothing—that I'll swear to—unless a pitchfork be taken to him. Enough said now. Have it out with your husband, and first put yourself in his place so far as your knowledge of him allows. Look out of his eyes, and try to feel what this means to such a man—ay, or any other man worth calling one."
"I will think of what you say. At least, you are right when you tell me that I have degenerated. Happiness means degeneration, I suppose."