"No. Not this time."
"She was going to see you."
"I believe she came just before she started. I had just gone out. We missed each other."
Leslie lifted his pince-nez. He was looking at Roger, with the grave, steady look by which people remembered him. Roger thought afterwards that his putting on of the pince-nez had been done tenderly, as though he had said, "I see that you are suffering. With these glasses I shall see how to help you."
"You were in love with her?" he asked, in a low voice.
"Yes. Who was not?"
"I have something to say to you about that. Have you ever thought of what marriage means? I am not talking of the passionate side. That is nothing. I am talking of the everyday aspect of married life. Have you thought of that at all?"
"All men have thought of it."
"Yes; I grant you. All men have thought of it. But do many of them think it home? Have you? I imagine that most men never follow the thought home; but leave it in day-dreams, and images of selfishness. I don't think that many men realise how infinitely much finer in quality the woman's mind is. Nor how much more delicately quick it is. Nor what the clash of that quickness and fineness, with something duller and grosser, may entail, in ordinary everyday life, to the woman."
"I think that I realise it."