In an ecstasy of psychological comprehension she proceeded to reveal the intimate workings of Kathleen's mind, which led to refusal of Gareth's offer. Revealed them in fashion so plausible and withal so subtle that the analysis partook of the nature of a miracle.
It was only a pity that she happened to be even further adrift in her estimate of Kathleen as a clinging three-volume-novel heroine, than had been Nelly in her vision of Gareth as a gay deceiver.
But Gareth was impressed. He supposed it took a woman to understand a woman. Moreover, viewed in the natural light of things, the Kathleen he was striving to explain to his mother seemed improbable, not to say absurd. He withdrew to his own room to think things over.
After his departure Mrs. Temple let drop her knitting and sat a little while inactive and musing. It had cost something to be loyal to the ideals with which she had striven to inculcate her son, that he should not ever be responsible for suffering. For despite her brave words, she did not want Gareth to bring home a wife. What mother does?
Gareth lounged at his open window, and smoked a cigarette, and saw the moon washing Paddington in silver, and gave himself up to a course of clear hard logical thinking. His methods of thought left his brain very much in the state of a girl's bedroom when in a hurry she has dressed for the dance. That is to say, he pulled out a vast quantity of reflections from the drawers where they had lain hidden; tumbled them over the floor, and looked at them in some amaze at their multitude and variety.
His mother's explanations had smoothed for him the plumage of peace, sadly ruffled by Kathleen's startling mood of the day before. That her refusal to espouse him was due to pride—of the wounded-stag order—over-sensitiveness, shame even, was an attitude he could well understand, and combat with his shield and buckler. His shield and buckler, like Nelly's marguerites and Edward's horsewhip, were of little avail in forcing a way against what the last-named had termed "new-fangled notions."
But below in the stuffy little sitting-room, with its horsehair furniture, its framed and faded daguerreotypes of long-dead relatives, its wool antimacassars, and painted firescreens, and shelves of Dickens' works complete in seventeen volumes, the vision had come alive again; familiar truths respecting maiden's tears and knighthood's redress, slipped back into their old places.
"... She thinks she has cheapened herself in your eyes"—and chivalry tingled to clasp a lance.
"... Cheapened herself." Gravely, steadfastly, the lad vowed himself to the removal of that misconception. Marry her? Of course he would marry her ... and with that a creeping uneasy sensation of helplessness, of unseen pressure.