'I am sorry you don't see it,' continued Tregellan, after a pause, 'to me it seems impossible; considering your history it takes me by surprise.'
The other frowned slightly; finding this persistence perhaps a trifle crude, he remarked good-humouredly enough:
'Will you be good enough to explain your opposition? Do you object to the girl? You have been back a week now, during which you have seen almost as much of her as I.'
'She is a child, to begin with; there is five-and-twenty years' disparity between you. But it's the relation I object to, not the girl. Do you intend to live in Ploumariel?'
Sebastian smiled, with a suggestion of irony.
'Not precisely; I think it would interfere a little with my career; why do you ask?'
'I imagined not; you will go back to London with your little Breton wife, who is as charming here as the apple-blossom in her own garden. You will introduce her to your circle, who will receive her with open arms; all the clever bores, who write, and talk, and paint, and are talked about between Bloomsbury and Kensington. Everybody who is emancipated will know her, and everybody who has a "fad"; and they will come in a body and emancipate her, and teach her their "fads."'
'That is a caricature of my circle, as you call it, Tregellan! though I may remind you it is also yours. I think she is being starved in this corner, spiritually. She has a beautiful soul, and it has had no chance. I propose to give it one, and I am not afraid of the result.'
Tregellan threw away the stump of his cigar into the darkling street, with a little gesture of discouragement, of lassitude.
'She has had the chance to become what she is, a perfect thing.'