"Well," he answered, "the situation is simple enough—it's the next move that's puzzling me. There was, four days ago, an explosion—it was after breakfast—a family council—and I was in a minority of one. I was accused of a good many things—going down to the Cove, paying no attention to the Miss Ponsonbys, and so on. They attacked me as I thought unfairly, and I lost control—on the whole, I am sure, wisely. I wasn't very rude, but I said quite plainly that I should go my own way in the future and would be dictated to by no one. At any rate they understand that."
"And now?"
"Ah, now—well—it's as you would expect. We are quite polite but hostile. Robin and I don't speak. The new game—Father and Son; or how to cut your nearest relations with expedition and security." He laughed bitterly.
"Oh, I should like to shake him!" she cried, sitting up and flinging her arms wide, as though she were saluting the sea. "He doesn't know, he doesn't understand! Neither himself nor any one else. Oh, I will talk to him some day! But, do you know," she said, turning round to him, "it's been largely your fault from the beginning."
"Oh, I know," he answered. "If I had only seen then what I see now. But how could I? How could I tell? But I always have been that kind of man, all my days—finding out things when it's too late and wanting to mend things that are hopelessly broken. And then I have always been impulsive and enthusiastic about people. When I meet them first, I mean, I like them and credit them with all the virtues, and then, of course, there is an awakening. Oh, you don't know," he said, with a little laugh, "how enthusiastic I was when I first came back."
"Yes, I do," she answered; "that was one of the reasons I took to you."
"But it isn't right," he said, shaking his head. "I've always been like that. It's been the same with my friendships. I've rated them too highly. I've expected everything and then cried like a child because I've been disappointed. I can see now not only the folly of it, but the weakness. It is, I suppose, a mistake, caring too much for other people, one loses one's self-respect."
"Yes," she said, staring out to sea, "it's quite true—one does. The world's too hard; it doesn't give one credit for fine feelings—it takes a short cut and thinks one a fool."
"But the worst of it is," he went on ruefully, "that I never feel any older. I have those enthusiasms and that romance in the same way now at forty-five—just as I did at nineteen. I never could bear quarrelling with anybody. I used to go and apologise even when it wasn't my fault—so that, you see, the present situation is difficult."
"Ah, but you must keep your end up," she broke in quickly. "It's the only way—don't give in. Robin is just like that. He is self-centred, all shams now, and when he sees that you are taken in by them, just as he is himself, he despises you. But when he sees you laugh at them or cut them down, then he respects you. I'm the only person, I think, that knows him really here. The others haven't grasped him at all."