The remark had been, as it were, torn from him, because he had observed, in the strong light of the compartment, that half of Tietjens' forelock and a roundish patch behind it was silvery white. That might have been going on for weeks: you live beside a man and notice his changes very little. Yorkshire men of fresh colour and blondish often go speckled with white very young; Tietjens had had a white hair or two at the age of fourteen, very noticeable in the sunlight when he had taken his cap off to bowl.
But Macmaster's mind, taking appalled change, had felt assured that Tietjens had gone white with the shock of his wife's letter: in four hours! That meant that terrible things must be going on within him; his thoughts, at all costs, must be distracted. The mental process in Macmaster had been quite subconscious. He would not, advisedly, have introduced the painter-poet as a topic.
Tietjens said:
"I haven't said anything at all that I can remember."
The obstinacy of his hard race awakened in Macmaster:
"'Since,'" he quoted, 'when we stand side by side
Only hands may meet,
Better half this weary world
Lay between us, sweet!
Better far tho' hearts may break
Bid farewell for aye!
Lest thy sad eyes, meeting mine,
Tempt my soul away!'
"You can't," he continued, "say that that isn't poetry! Great poetry."
"I can't say," Tietjens answered contemptuously. "I don't read poetry except Byron. But it's a filthy picture. . . ."
Macmaster said uncertainly: