“Well, you are like anybody else, aren’t you?” Robert Grimshaw said.
“Of course, too,” Held said, “it’ll be such a tremendous thing for her to have a woman to confide in. She does need it. I can feel that she needs it. Oh, as for me, of course I took a first in classics, but what’s the good of that when you aren’t any mortal use in the world? I might be somebody’s secretary, but I don’t know how those jobs are got. I never had any influence. My father was only Vicar of Melkham. The only thing I could do would be to be a Healer. I’ve so much faith that I am sure I could do it with good conscience, whereas I don’t think I’ve been doing this quite conscientiously. I mean I don’t think that I ever believed I could be much good.”
Robert Grimshaw said: “Ah!”
“If there’d been anything to report to Sir William, I could have reported it, for I am very observant, but there was nothing. There’s been absolutely nothing. Or if there’d been any fear of violence—Sir William always selects me for cases of intermittent violence.”
Again Robert Grimshaw said: “Ah!” and his eyes went over Mr. Held’s form.
“You see,” Held continued, “I’m so immensely strong. I held the amateur belt for wrestling for three years, Græco-Roman style. I expect I could hold it still if I kept in training. But wasn’t I right when I said that Mrs. Leicester had some sort of psychological revulsion this afternoon?” He spoke the words pleadingly, and added in an almost inaudible voice: “You don’t mind my asking? It isn’t an impertinence? It means such an immense amount to me.”
“Yes, I think perhaps you’re right,” Grimshaw said. “Something of the sort must have occurred.”
“I felt it,” Held continued, speaking very quickly; “I felt it inwardly. Isn’t it wonderful, these waves that come out from people one’s keenly sympathetic to? Quite suddenly it came; about an hour after Sir William had gone. She was sitting on the arm of Mr. Leicester’s chair and I felt it.”
“But wasn’t it because her face fell—something like that?” Robert Grimshaw asked.
“Oh no, oh no,” Held said; “I had my back to her. I was looking out of the window. To tell the truth, I can’t bear to look at her when she sits like that beside him; it’s so ...”