He seated himself silently in the arm-chair beside the bed, and kept his soothing hold on her shoulder. The time had come when he went through all these accustomed acts of pacification as mechanically as a nurse soothing a fretful child. And once he had thought her weeping eloquent! He looked about him at the spacious room, with its heavy hangings of damask and the thick velvet carpet which stifled his steps. Everywhere were the graceful tokens of her presence—the vast lace-draped toilet-table strewn with silver and crystal, the embroidered muslin cushions heaped on the lounge, the little rose-lined slippers she had just put off, the lace wrapper, with a scent of violets in its folds, which he had pushed aside when he sat down beside her; and he remembered how full of a mysterious and intimate charm these things had once appeared to him. It was characteristic that the remembrance made him more patient with her now. Perhaps, after all, it was his failure that she was crying over....
"Don't be unhappy. You decided as seemed best to you," he said.
She pressed her handkerchief against her lips, still keeping her head averted. "But I hate all these arguments and disputes. Why should you unsettle everything?" she murmured.
His mother's words! Involuntarily he removed his hand from her shoulder, though he still remained seated by the bed.
"You are right. I see the uselessness of it," he assented, with an uncontrollable note of irony.
She turned her head at the tone, and fixed her plaintive brimming eyes on him. "You are angry with me!"
"Was that troubling you?" He leaned forward again, with compassion in his face. Sancta simplicitas! was the thought within him.
"I am not angry," he went on; "be reasonable and try to sleep."
She started upright, the light masses of her hair floating about her like silken sea-weed lifted on an invisible tide. "Don't talk like that! I can't endure to be humoured like a baby. I am unhappy because I can't see why all these wretched questions should be dragged into our life. I hate to have you always disagreeing with Mr. Tredegar, who is so clever and has so much experience; and yet I hate to see you give way to him, because that makes it appear as if...as if...."
"He didn't care a straw for my ideas?" Amherst smiled. "Well, he doesn't—and I never dreamed of making him. So don't worry about that either."