Gwendolen immediately said, “You despise me for talking artificially.”
“No,” said Deronda, looking at her coolly; “I think that is quite excusable sometimes. But I did not think what you were last saying was altogether artificial.”
“There was something in it that displeased you,” said Gwendolen. “What was it?”
“It is impossible to explain such things,” said Deronda. “One can never communicate niceties of feeling about words and manner.”
“You think I am shut out from understanding them,” said Gwendolen, with a slight tremor in her voice, which she was trying to conquer. “Have I shown myself so very dense to everything you have said?” There was an indescribable look of suppressed tears in her eyes, which were turned on him.
“Not at all,” said Deronda, with some softening of voice. “But experience differs for different people. We don’t all wince at the same things. I have had plenty of proof that you are not dense.” He smiled at her.
“But one may feel things and are not able to do anything better for all that,” said Gwendolen, not smiling in return—the distance to which Deronda’s words seemed to throw her chilling her too much. “I begin to think we can only get better by having people about us who raise good feelings. You must not be surprised at anything in me. I think it is too late for me to alter. I don’t know how to set about being wise, as you told me to be.”
“I seldom find I do any good by my preaching. I might as well have kept from meddling,” said Deronda, thinking rather sadly that his interference about that unfortunate necklace might end in nothing but an added pain to him in seeing her after all hardened to another sort of gambling than roulette.
“Don’t say that,” said Gwendolen, hurriedly, feeling that this might be her only chance of getting the words uttered, and dreading the increase of her own agitation. “If you despair of me, I shall despair. Your saying that I should not go on being selfish and ignorant has been some strength to me. If you say you wish you had not meddled—that means you despair of me and forsake me. And then you will decide for me that I shall not be good. It is you who will decide; because you might have made me different by keeping as near to me as you could, and believing in me.”
She had not been looking at him as she spoke, but at the handle of the fan which she held closed. With the last words she rose and left him, returning to her former place, which had been left vacant; while every one was settling into quietude in expectation of Mirah’s voice, which presently, with that wonderful, searching quality of subdued song in which the melody seems simply an effect of the emotion, gave forth, Per pietà non dirmi addio.