Antonia stared.
“Suppose,” he said—“I don't pretend to know, I only suppose—what Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other people? If you were to load him with a character and give him money on condition that he acted as we all act, do you think he would accept it?”
“Why not?”
“Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?”
Antonia slid down from the wall.
“You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying,” she said, and turned away.
Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the wall, her hands turned back across her narrow hips. She halted at the bend, looked back, then, with an impatient gesture, disappeared.
Antonia was slipping from him!
A moment's vision from without himself would have shown him that it was he who moved and she who was standing still, like the figure of one watching the passage of a stream with clear, direct, and sullen eyes.