She shook her head. "The person who cares, can't scheme and contrive. He didn't care. He never really cared for me—only for himself; at heart, he was cold and selfish. No, I paid for it all—I who hate and shrink from pain, who would do anything to avoid it. I want to go through life knowing only what is bright and happy; and time and again, I am crushed and flung down. But, in all my life, I haven't suffered like this. And now perhaps you understand, why I never want to hear his name again, and why I shall never—not if I live to be a hundred years old—never forgive him. It isn't in me to do it. As a child, I ground my heel into a rose if it pricked me."
There was a silence. Then she sighed, and pushed her hair back from forehead. "I don't know why I should say all this to you," she said contritely. "But often, just with you, I seem to forget what I am saying. It must be, I think, because you're so quiet yourself."
At this, Maurice turned and came over to her. "No, it's for another reason. You need to say these things to some one. You have brooded over them to yourself till they are magnified out of all proportion. It's the best thing in the world for you to say them aloud." He drew up a chair, and sat down beside her. "Listen to me. You told me once, not very long ago, that I was your friend. Well, I want to speak to you to-night as that friend, and to play the doctor a little as well. Will you not go away from here, for a time?—go away and be with people who know nothing of ... all this—people you don't need to be afraid of? Let yourself be persuaded. You have such a healthy nature. Give it a chance."
She looked at him with a listless forbearance. "Don't go on. I know everything you are going to say.—That's always the way with you calm, quiet people, who are not easily moved yourselves. You still but faith in these trite remedies; for you've never known the ills they're supposed to cure."
"Never mind me. It's you we have to think of. And I want you to give my old-fashioned remedy a trial."
But she did not answer, and again a few minutes went by, before she stretched out her hand to him. "Forget what I've said to-night. I shall never speak of it again.—But then you, too, must promise not to make me go out alone—to think and remember—in all the dirt and ugliness of the streets."
And Maurice promised.
IX.
The unnatural position circumstances had forced him into, was to him summed up in the fact that he had spoken in defence of the man he despised above all others. Only at isolated moments was he content with the part he played; it was wholly unlike what he had intended. He had wished to be friend and mentor to her, and he was now both; but nevertheless, there was something wrong about his position. It seemed as if he had at first been satisfied with too low a place in her esteem, ever to allow of him taking a higher one. He was conscious that in her liking for him, there was a drop of contempt. And he tormented himself with such a question as: should a new crisis in her life arise, would she, now that she knows you, turn to you? And in moments of despondency he answered no. He felt the tolerance that lurked in her regard for him. Kindness and care on his part were not enough.