"But surely——?"
"'Surely I could do no better,' you were going to say?"
"Indeed, no. Surely your father's first thought is your future happiness?"
"My future—not my future happiness. You see, one's parents have got over our young delusions about people being happy. Fathers and mothers forget that love matters. They hold it as we hold the fleeting wretchedness of a toothache. They don't even pity us. Yet my father was a grand lover, for my mother has told me so; but he has forgotten."
"You honour me to divulge these sacred things about yourself. Poor Norcot—and yet—in a sense—in truth from my whole heart and soul, I mean. But how is this to the point? To sum up, you don't love him?"
"That is exactly what I strive day and night to make clear to everybody."
"Would it be beyond the limits of courtesy to breathe a question on so great a subject? Yet I seem to know the answer. It must be so. It sinks like lead into me; you love somebody else, Miss Malherb?"
"Heyday! And if I do, why should you be miserable, Mr. Stark? I love my mother, sir, and my father, and—and all who love me—excepting only Mr. Norcot. I love him too—the Bible bids me love him; but I don't like Him. The Bible is too wise to order the impossible. It does not tell us to like anybody."
"Listen, if I may—at least——"
"Do you hear the river in flood? It is like the sound of an angry sea by night."