“It’s the only sensible way.”
“Hang sense,” muttered John.
“My dear fellow,” urged Corin soothingly, “look at matters in a reasonable light. Here are you sighing, frowning, suffering real mental pain on behalf of a family—a quite picturesque and interesting family, I’ve no doubt, but one with which you have the barest bowing acquaintance, the merest superficial knowledge. Your attitude isn’t reasonable, it’s altogether exaggerated and beside the mark.”
“It’s merely ordinary decent human sympathy,” retorted John.
Corin raised his light arched eyebrows till they nearly touched his light straight hair.
“Then,” he remarked coolly, “defend me from your company when you are suffering from extraordinary human sympathy. Seriously, though,” he went on, “aren’t you being a trifle exalté in the matter? Aren’t you plunging the sword of sympathy a bit too deeply into your heart? For a moment—just for one brief infinitesimal moment—consider facts as they are. Here are we two, dropped by the merest chance upon this place, fallen upon it by the merest freak of fortune—three weeks ago I’d never even heard of its existence—and we’ve really no more individual connection with it than with—with Mount Popocatepetl. What possible reason, or, I might say, what right or justification, has either one of us to take to heart the private and personal trials of a family living here. It’s—it’s almost an impertinence. We aren’t in the picture at all. We’re altogether superfluous to them. Look at the whole thing from the point of view of an audience,” continued Corin blandly. “A month or two hence the curtain will have fallen on this little drama, as far as we are concerned. We aren’t on the stage at all.”
John smiled, a little grim smile, provoked, no doubt, by the eminent common-sense of Corin’s statement.
“You have a really wonderfully level way of regarding matters,” he remarked.
“Isn’t it common-sense?” demanded Corin.
“Oh, yes, it’s common-sense right enough,” conceded John airily.