She hung over him as it were, as a tense silence.
“There is a difference,” he admitted, and still went unhelped.
“How can I put it? I think in certain ways you contrast with her, in a way that makes things easier for her. He has—I know the thing sounds like cant, only you know, he doesn’t plead it in defence—he has a temperament, to which she sometimes appeals more than you do.”
“Yes, I know, but how?”
“Well——”
“Tell me.”
“You are austere. You are restrained. Life—for a man like Chatteris—is schooling. He has something—something perhaps more worth having than most of us have—but I think at times—it makes life harder for him than it is for a lot of us. Life comes at him, with limitations and regulations. He knows his duty well enough. And you— You mustn’t mind what I say too much, Miss Glendower—I may be wrong.”
“Go on,” she said, “go on.”
“You are too much—the agent general of his duty.”
“But surely!—what else——?”