'But you didn't spend your Christmas alone, I hope?'
'Oh, I had my books.'
Was there not a touch of natural pathos in this? He hoped so; then mocked at himself for calculating such effects.
'I think you don't care much for ordinary social pleasures, Mr Peak?'
He smiled bitterly.
'I have never known much of them,—and you remember that I look forward to a life in which they will have little part. Such a life,' he continued, after a pause, 'seems to you unendurably dull? I noticed that, when I spoke of it before.'
'You misunderstood me.' She said it so undecidedly that he gazed at her with puzzled look. Her eyes fell.
'But you like society?'
'If you use the word in its narrowest meaning,' she answered, 'then I not only dislike society, but despise it.'
She had raised her eyebrows, and was looking coldly at him. Did she mean to rebuke him for the tone he had adopted? Indeed, he seemed to himself presumptuous. But if they were still on terms such as these, was it not better to know it, even at the cost of humiliation? One moment he believed that he could read Sidwell's thoughts, and that they were wholly favourable to him; at another he felt absolutely ignorant of all that was passing in her, and disposed to interpret her face as that of a conventional woman who had never regarded him as on her own social plane. These uncertainties, these frequent reversions to a state of mind which at other times he seemed to have long outgrown, were a singular feature of his relations with Sidwell. Could such experiences consist with genuine love? Never had he felt more willing to answer the question with a negative. He felt that he was come here to act a part, and that the end of the interview, be it what it might, would only affect him superficially.