“I should n’t have offered to say so; but since you ask me, I do.”
“I don’t believe it. She idolizes me, and if she never were to see me again she would idolize my memory.”
This might be profound insight, and it might be profound fatuity. Rowland turned away; he could not trust himself to speak.
“My indifference, my neglect of her, must have seemed to you horrible. Altogether, I must have appeared simply hideous.”
“Do you really care,” Rowland asked, “what you appeared?”
“Certainly. I have been damnably stupid. Is n’t an artist supposed to be a man of perceptions? I am hugely disgusted.”
“Well, you understand now, and we can start afresh.”
“And yet,” said Roderick, “though you have suffered, in a degree, I don’t believe you have suffered so much as some other men would have done.”
“Very likely not. In such matters quantitative analysis is difficult.”
Roderick picked up his stick and stood looking at the ground. “Nevertheless, I must have seemed hideous,” he repeated—“hideous.” He turned away, scowling, and Rowland offered no contradiction.