"I've imposed upon you," he said, after a moment, flinging himself down on the grass a little distance off—"imposed upon you frightfully, if I've made you believe that. I'm far enough from being even master of myself."
"Too late to try to patch it up now," she said; "the murder's out."
He studied her.
"I suppose you think you know me?"
She smiled confidently.
"You don't. I'm compounded of all the things that are most abhorrent to you."
Still she smiled. The unconscious passion in the young eyes warmed his blood like wine. He moved a little nearer to her, and the mere movement broke the spell. The physical obviousness of the action stung him into self-criticism, self-contempt; and then as he turned his face away from his cousin's magnet eyes, he fell to criticising his self-criticism. Why couldn't he take things simply, naturally, as Val did? Vain ambition! He must submit to seeing, always and always, the skeleton under the fair flesh, the end from the beginning.
"You are mistaken about me," he said. "I look out upon a world eternally different from the world you see."
"What's it like?"