"I think," Barclay went on, looking at her with a reassuring smile, "that it is my duty to advise you to think it all over again—everything."
"Oh, John," she faltered, "this is my fault. It is because I have been dull and moody. You think I'm ungrateful. You must think I am, but, indeed, I am not."
"Any marriage that is based on gratitude," he said sharply, leaning forward in the gloom, "is bound to go smash. I mean exactly what I say, Grisel: you must think it all over again. I have told you the truth; you know just how I feel, and, of course, you have known all along that you do not love me as"—he rose and came slowly towards her—"as, say, Miss Perkins presumably loves Wick."
She stood facing him with quickened breath. "Miss Perkins has nothing to do with it, John," she said with a quiet dignity that touched him. "If you wish to break our engagement, I—I am quite willing to let you do so, of course, but I don't wish to break it." She turned and went out of the room.
He went to the window and stood looking out into the delightful rain; he could smell fresh leaves and revived flowers; the very smell of wet dust was pleasant.
For a long time he stood there, going over in his mind the scene that had just passed. It struck him as very odd that Grisel had not guessed that the girl in his story had been her mother. He could not, in his well-balanced middle age, realise the savage strength of her youthful egotism. It seemed strange to him, but it was very plain, that the only interest in his story lay, to her, in the fact that it explained why he had not much left to give her—her. The story itself seemed to her, he could see, as remote as if its actors had been contemporaries of Noah. It was too far off for her to feel it. Quite different, however, it had been when he mentioned Miss Perkins' name. Half anxiously he had hoped by mentioning Miss Perkins to precipitate the crisis that he felt to be on its way, but nothing happened. His gun had missed fire.
"I shall have to have a talk with Mrs. Walbridge," he said to himself at last as the clock struck half-past nine. "Something has got to be done, poor little thing——" Then he went upstairs and joined the others.