“Not difficult to understand why. He has a silver tongue and a face like John the Baptist—del Sarto’s—and you are romantic. The picture of him has enlisted your sympathies. You are filled with pity that he should be so richly endowed, facially and mentally, and to be a cripple such as children laugh over.”
“Have you never considered what mental anguish must be the portion of a man whose body is twisted as his is? I know. So I pity him profoundly, even if he is a rogue. That’s all I was born for—to pity and to bind up. And I pity you, Mr. Cleigh, you who have walled your heart in granite.” 200
“You’re plain-spoken, young lady.”
“Yes, certain sick minds need plain speaking.”
“Then my mind is sick?”
“Yes.”
“And only a little while gone it was romantic!”
“Two hundred million hands begging for bread, and you crossing the world for a string of glass beads whose value is only sentimental!”
“I can’t let that pass, Miss Norman. I have trusted lieutenants who attend to my charities. I’m not a miser.”
“You are, with the greatest thing in the world—human love.”