“Of course you don’t like it when I tell you the truth. Nobody likes to hear the truth. Human beings lap up lies as pigs lap up milk. And women are worst of all in that! No woman really can love a person—not, at any rate, for long—who tells her the truth! That is why women love clergymen, because clergymen are brought up to lie. I saw you laughing and amusing yourself the other evening with Mr. Clavering—you and your friend Gladys. I went the other way, so as not to interrupt such a merry conversation.”
Lacrima turned upon him at this.
“I cannot understand how you can say such things of me!” she cried. “It is too much. I won’t—I won’t listen to it!”
Her over-strained nerves broke down at last, and covering her face with her hands, she burst into a fit of convulsive sobs.
Mr. Quincunx rose and stood gazing at her, gloomily plucking at his beard.
“And such are women!” he thought to himself. “One can never tell them the least truth but they burst into tears.”
He waited thus in silence for one or two moments, and then an expression of exquisite tenderness and sympathy came into his face. His patient grey eyes looked at her bowed head with the look of a sorrowful god. Gently he sat down beside her and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“Lacrima—dear—I am sorry—I oughtn’t to have said that. I didn’t mean it. On my solemn oath I didn’t mean it! Lacrima, please don’t cry. I can’t bear it when you cry. It was all absolute nonsense what I said just now. It is the devil that gets into me and makes me say those things! Lacrima—darling Lacrima—we won’t tease one another any more.”
Her sobs diminished under the obvious sincerity of his words. She lifted up a tear-stained face and threw her arms passionately round his neck.