Katherine smiled with perfect confidence. “He wouldn’t insist on anything that would make me so unhappy—or anyone unhappy. All he wants is that everyone should like everyone else, and that no one should be hurt.”
“I’m not sure,” said Henry, “whether it isn’t that sort who hurt people most in the end.” He took her hand in his. “He can do anything he likes, Katherine, anything, and I’ll adore him madly, so long as he doesn’t hurt you. If he does that—”
Aunt Aggie, standing in the doorway with the look of one who must live up to having had breakfast in bed, interrupted him:
“Ah, Katherine, there you are. The last thing I want is to give trouble to anyone, but I passed so poor a night that I feel quite unequal to marking those pillow-cases that I offered yesterday to do for your mother. I was so anxious yesterday afternoon to help her, as indeed I always am, but of course I couldn’t foretell that my night would be so disturbed. I wonder whether you—”
“Why, of course, Aunt Aggie,” said Katherine.
Henry’s morning reflections resolved themselves finally into the decision that to continue his emancipation he would, definitely, before the day closed, penetrate into the heart of his Club. He found, when he arrived there, that he was so deeply occupied with thoughts of Katherine, Philip and himself that he knew no fear. He boldly passed the old man in the hall who exactly resembled a goat, climbed the stairs with the air of one who had been doing it all his life, and discovered a room with a fire, a table with papers, some book-cases with ancient books, and Seymour. That gentleman was standing before the fire, a smile of beaming self-satisfaction upon his red fat face; he greeted Henry with that altruistic welcome that was peculiarly his own. A manner that implied that God had sent him especially into the world to show other men how to be jolly, optimistic, kind-hearted and healthy.
“Why, who ever expected to see you here?” he cried. “You’re yellow about the gills, my son. Have a whisky and soda.”
“No, thank you,” said Henry, with an internal shudder. “I thought I’d just look in.”
“Why, of course,” said Seymour. “How jolly to see you!”
They drew their chairs in front of the fire and talked—at least Seymour talked. He told Henry what a lucky fellow he, Seymour, was, how jolly the world was, how splendid the weather was. He let slip by accident the facts that three publishers were fighting for his next book, that America had gone mad about his last one (“although I always said, you know, that to be popular in America was a sure sign that one was no good”), and that he’d overheard some woman at a party saying that he was the most interesting young man of the day. He told these tales with an air as though he would imply—“How absurd these people are! How ridiculous!”