She turned her head away sharply, that neither of them might see the sudden, swift mist that dimmed her eyes, but she only answered:
“All the same, if there had been no G, and no you, the universe would have had an atom less pain in it, and no one have been any the worse.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he told her, “because Ethel couldn’t have done without me, and if you put your head in at my door occasionally, and just remark to F that G is across the passage, F will be glad the universe didn’t decide to leave G out of the alphabet.”
The woman looked at him a moment with a curious expression in her eyes. Then she said:
“Well, if you can take the insult of a maimed, or joyless, or cursed life like that, it oughtn’t to be so very hard for me to be glad I happened to be able to come over and light your fire.”
“Nor so very hard to come again.”
“Ah!…” she hesitated, then said to him, looking half-defiantly towards Ethel: “Time after time, when I thought you were alone, I’ve wanted to just look in and see if you were all right. But I didn’t like to. People don’t take to me as a rule, and I’m… I’m… well, I’m not an ingratiating sort of person, and I guessed, probably, you’d all rather do without any help I had to give.”
“It was kind of you to think of us at all,” Ethel said, not quite sure whether Basil would like her to come in or not.
“You guessed wrong,” was his answer. “I think it would be very nice of you to look in occasionally. It certainly seems rather absurd for you to be all alone there, and I all alone here, when we both want a little company. I’m sure the alphabet was not meant to be so unsociable.”
“It just depends.”