“You’ve got a heart,” he said, “and you are one of the brave sort that stand up to life and go through with a thing like a good plucked one, even though you know you’ve made a mistake. Well, such show sympathy for their neighbours, Medora, so I’m sure you’ll be sorry to hear I’ve had a great disappointment.”
The other guessed what it was.
“Mother won’t marry you!”
“So she says; but on a very poor excuse in my opinion. Such a sensible woman might have found a better reason for turning me down. In fact she would—if there’d been a better reason; but the truth is there’s no reason at all. Therefore, though she thinks I’m rejected, I don’t regard myself as in that position—not yet.”
A love so venerable in her eyes did not interest Medora, but she mildly wondered at him.
“I’m sure I can’t think how you old people can run after each other and drive each other miserable, when you see what a beastly mess we young people make of love,” she said.
“Ah! You speak with a good deal of feeling. But we old people—as you call us, rather thoughtlessly, Medora—we old people don’t take you children for a model. We’ve been through those stages, and what we understand by love ain’t what you understand by it. We’ve forgotten more than you know. I should have thought now that Kellock—a man so much older than his years—might have given you a glimpse of the beauty and steadfastness of what we’ll call middling to middle-aged love, Medora?”
“Perhaps he has.”
“Don’t his ideas appeal to you as a bit lofty and high class—as compared with your first’s notion of it for instance?”
She looked sharply at Mr. Knox, but did not answer. He put the question moodily and appeared not interested in an answer. Indeed he proceeded without waiting for her to speak.