‘It’s too bad,’ Bunny reproached Edward.
‘Oh, don’t sympathize with me, please!’ said Hypatia.
Sheila thought: ‘How hard she has grown!’ and, having already tasted of her friend’s sublime certainties, she felt some relish for Edward’s mockery.
Edward seemed the most likeable person in the room, except perhaps Bunny. Edward was for the most part very quiet and self-contained. He possessed rather an impressive dome of forehead, but he maintained an impenetrable reserve without assuming that air of learning and distinction in which his mother sought so earnestly to invest him. Mrs. Fairfield’s maternal glance conveyed unmistakably to the rest: ‘We must not trouble Edward with our trivial talk. His thoughts are not our thoughts; neither are his ways our ways. He has taken his degree, and he is writing a book.’ Sometimes she referred questions to him, as to an authority; it was as though she was continually thrusting upon him his bachelor’s hood, he as continually repudiating it with a confession of ignorance or indifference. His anxiety to avoid oracular authority kept him more silent than the rest; and this very silence gave him in Sheila’s eyes a distinction that was almost fascination. She guessed him to be modest, unassuming, and clever. The mystery of his inner life drew her interest towards him.
But Bunny, too, was interesting; for Bunny had good looks and that air of trustfully appealing for affection to which Sheila was so susceptible. There was something pathetic about his obvious devotion to Hypatia. Except the commanding Mrs. Fairfield he seemed to look at no one else. He deferred to Hypatia constantly.
‘I suppose you would say that a headache is essentially unreal, Hypatia? If we knew the truth about ourselves we shouldn’t have headaches, should we?’
‘We shouldn’t have even heads,’ said Edward. ‘I see you’ve already had a dose, Bunny.’
‘Shut up, Fairfield!’ said the Honourable Richard. ‘Give your sister a hearing. Am I right, Hypatia?’
‘Certainly,’ agreed Hypatia. ‘Our failure to apprehend the truth is the root of all so-called evil and pain.’
‘I see,’ said Bunny, wrinkling his brow.