'John's taste was different from that of the people who made the house,' she said.
'Yes, I know. These pictures, and the old books in the library, and so on. Is that what you mean?'
'Well, the insides of the books, and other pictures which we don't have—and so on,' she finished indefinitely.
'Yes. You thought John was crude and rather coarse in feeling.'
'Oh, no—not that indeed!'
'You wouldn't call it just that, of course. But the difference between you was the same, whether it put you up high or him down low. Isn't that so? You were sorry for yourself because John was not on your level?'
'Yes,' admitted Rachel, reluctantly voicing the word.
'Were you ever sorry enough for John because you were not on his level?—There are different kinds of lonesomeness,' he added after a pause. 'I never saw a worse case than John's.'
Rachel sat upright, looking at him in a sort of amazement, as much at himself as at the idea. She had never dreamed that behind his apparently sympathetic observation of her lay any condemnation of her attitude.
He met her look with one as direct, and asked, in a way which made the question a sort of arraignment, 'Did it ever occur to you what a tragedy John's life was?'