“What did she say?”
“Not a syllable. She simply emptied her purse.”
Rowland turned over and buried his face in his arms. He felt a movement of irrepressible elation, and he barely stifled a cry of joy. Now, surely, Roderick had shattered the last link in the chain that bound Mary to him, and after this she would be free!... When he turned about again, Roderick was still sitting there, and he had not touched the keys which lay on the grass.
“I don’t know what is the matter with me,” said Roderick, “but I have an insurmountable aversion to taking your money.”
“The matter, I suppose, is that you have a grain of wisdom left.”
“No, it ‘s not that. It ‘s a kind of brute instinct. I find it extremely provoking!” He sat there for some time with his head in his hands and his eyes on the ground. His lips were compressed, and he was evidently, in fact, in a state of profound irritation. “You have succeeded in making this thing excessively unpleasant!” he exclaimed.
“I am sorry,” said Rowland, “but I can’t see it in any other way.”
“That I believe, and I resent the range of your vision pretending to be the limit of my action. You can’t feel for me nor judge for me, and there are certain things you know nothing about. I have suffered, sir!” Roderick went on with increasing emphasis. “I have suffered damnable torments. Have I been such a placid, contented, comfortable man this last six months, that when I find a chance to forget my misery, I should take such pains not to profit by it? You ask too much, for a man who himself has no occasion to play the hero. I don’t say that invidiously; it ‘s your disposition, and you can’t help it. But decidedly, there are certain things you know nothing about.”
Rowland listened to this outbreak with open eyes, and Roderick, if he had been less intent upon his own eloquence, would probably have perceived that he turned pale. “These things—what are they?” Rowland asked.
“They are women, principally, and what relates to women. Women for you, by what I can make out, mean nothing. You have no imagination—no sensibility!”