"Shall I, really?" she questioned.
Jim nodded.
"Remember, you've brought it on yourself." She seated herself close to the sundial, and half leaned against it. Jim was facing her. "Well, to begin with, you will never wholly succeed in life."
"Dear me, I meant surgery, not butchery, Di."
She paid no heed to the interruption. "You are not spiritual enough to create your own world, and you are too idealistic to be happy in this frankly material world. You have temperament and sentiment; they are fatal in a practical age." She paused; there was no denial from Jim. As she waited for him to speak, her eyes rested on the decorations glittering on his coat. "Your breast is covered with medals for personal courage, but you could never be a great general."
He almost stopped her with a reminder of the days on the Northwestern Hills, but a certain truth in all that she said kept him silent. His memory went back to the hours in which he had fought—even at the sacrifice of himself—to save his men. He heard her say:
"You could never sink your point of view to the demands of necessary horrors. Confronted with the alternative of suffering, or causing suffering, you would suffer." She rose, and, as though peering into the future, said, "You are marked for the sacrifice."
Her face shone as though illumined by a clairvoyant power of spiritual insight. She seemed to have forgotten the present and stared straight ahead, trying to see into the heavy mists that enveloped the coming years. Jim made an effort to relax the nervous tension of the moment.
"What a rosy, alluring picture! A failure at everything I touch, eh? Have I one redeeming virtue?"
But although the voice that spoke was light with raillery he was possessed by an uncontrollable agitation. She stood with a haunted look of such intensity on her face that he became conscious only of an infinite desire to protect her. As he came close to her she was thrilled by the vibrating sympathy that drew them together, and raised her eyes to his. The strong, tender face of Jim, to which she had so often turned in her days of unspoken despair, gave her the comprehension and sympathy that were denied her by another. She thought of the expression of Sadie Jones's eyes as she sang: