"Folly—madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me? Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want you to hear it while you keep your later attitude in mind.
"Life—what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale—'"
"But I know the verse."
"No; hear it out;—hear what you sent me:
"'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see
The man who sells his soul in some wild cause:
The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss,
All that he was and all he thought to be:
The rebel stark against his country's laws:
God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'"
She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones.
"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here never really forget those things—and we'd have been helpless—some day you'll thank me for thinking for you."
"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?"
"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you." "And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready. Surely that showed my spirit—and you haven't known me these years without knowing it would have to be that or nothing."
"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?"