“I felt that I could not avoid writing it, Ernest. It would have been impossible for me to remain any longer in the position I was in: I could not carry on the course of deception into which you led me—no, that is going too far; I did not quite mean to say so much.”
“Then it was only your own kind heart that restrained you; for you might have meant all that you said and a great deal more. I admit that I was to blame in leading you to make me the promise that has caused you all this unhappiness.”
“You were not more to blame than I was. In these matters it is decreed that the blame is not to be laid at the door of one person only. You are a man with ambition—you could not be expected—that is to say, the world does not expect that you should feel the same way as a woman does over such a point as the one which I dwelt on. A secret such as ours was is, I know, a very little matter in the life of such a man as you are. You are, I have heard, the guardian of some of the most important secrets in the world. But in any case a man’s life contains innumerable secrets that are never revealed until he is dead.”
“That is quite true.”
“A man with a career to—to—cultivate—men cultivate a career as gardeners do their roses——”
(They were standing beside a rose bed now.)
“And not unfrequently by the same agents of fertilisation.”
“Such a man must of necessity come to think more of the great issues of certain incidents than of the incidents themselves.”
“That is perfectly true.” He shook his head with a mournfulness that was precisely in keeping with the sadness which could be seen in his expression. “Too true—too true!” he murmured. “Yes, a man loses a sense of perspective——”
“Not he,” cried Josephine. “A man’s sense of perspective is fairly accurate. It is a woman who is wanting in this respect. We have so accustomed ourselves to see only what is under our noses that we become shortsighted and are utterly unable to perceive the size and significance of everything at a distance. That is how it comes that something beneath our eyes seems so enormous when after all, it is quite insignificant. Oh, men do not take such narrow—such shortsighted views of the incidents of life.”