"I didn't bring her away. She begged me to let her go."
"Then you must have been cruel to her. You must have made her think that it mattered."
"Well, doesn't it matter?"
She laughed a little harshly. "What a different man you're becoming, Mr. Speed! Before you married Helen you knew perfectly well that she was horribly nervous in front of strangers and that she'd never show off well at rather tiresome society functions. And yet if I or anybody else had dared to suggest that it mattered you'd have been most tremendously indignant. You used to think her nervousness rather charming, in fact."
He said, rather pathetically: "You've cornered me, I confess. And I suppose I'd better tell you the real reason. Helen's nervousness doesn't matter to me. It never has mattered and it doesn't matter now. It wasn't that, or rather, that would never have annoyed me but for something infinitely more serious. While I was at home I found out about my appointment at Lavery's."
"Well, what about it?"
"It was my father got it for me. He interviewed Portway and Ervine and God knows who else."
"Well?"
"Well?—Do you think I like to be dependent on that sort of help? Do you think I like to remember all the kind things that people at Millstead have said about me, and to feel that they weren't sincere, that they were simply the result of a little of my father's wire-pulling?"
She did not answer.