"I am glad you liked my house," he said. "But I hear the aristocracy of the Row laments. It shies at the idea of being invaded by more or less frightful creatures. But I remain deaf. I really can't bother about that. It is so immeasurably more unpleasant to be frightful than to see that which is so, that I'm afraid my sympathies remain rather pig-headedly one-sided. I propose to educate the Row in the grace of pity. It may lay up merit by due exercise of that."
Richard took off his hat and rode bareheaded, looking away into the delicious, green gloom. Here, where the wood was thickest, oak and beech shutting out the sky, clasping hands overhead, the ground beneath them deep in moss and fern, that gloom was precisely like the colour of Honoria's eyes. He wished it wasn't so. He tried to forget it. But the resemblance haunted him. Look where he might, still he seemed to look into those singular and charming eyes. He talked on determinedly, putting a force upon himself—too often saying that which, no sooner was it out of his mouth, than, he wished unsaid.
"I don't want to be too hard on the Row, though. It has a right, after all, to its little prejudices. Only you see for those who, poor souls, are different to other people it becomes of such supreme importance to keep in touch with the average. I have found that out in practice. And so I refuse to shut my waste humanity away. They must neither hide themselves nor be hidden, be spared seeing how much other people enjoy from which they are debarred, or grow over-conscious of their own ungainliness. That is why I've planted them and their gardens, and their pigs and their poultry—we'll have a lot of live stock, a second generation, even of chickens, offers remarkable consolations!—on the highroad, at the entrance of the little town, where, on a small scale at all events, they'll see the world that's straight-backed and has its proper complement of limbs and senses, go by. Envy, hatred, and malice, and the seven devils of morbidity are forever lying in wait for them—well—for us—for me and those like me, I mean. In proportion as one's brought up tenderly—as I was—one doesn't realise the deprivation and disgust of one's condition at the start. But once realised, one's inclination is to kill. At least a man's is. A woman may accept it more quietly, I suppose."
"Richard," Honoria said slowly, "are you sure you don't greatly exaggerate all—all that?"
He shook his head.
"Thirty years' experience—no, I don't exaggerate! Each time one makes a fresh acquaintance, each time a pretty woman is just that bit kinder to one than she would dare be to any man who was not out of it, each time people are manifestly interested—politely, of course—and form a circle, make room for one as they did at that particularly disagreeable Grimshott garden party yesterday, each time—I don't want to drivel, but so it is—one sees a pair of lovers—oh! well, it's not easy to retain one's philosophy, not to obey the primitive instincts of any animal when it's ill-used and hurt, and to revenge oneself—to want to kill, in short."
"You—you don't hate women, then?" Honoria said, still slowly.
Richard stared at her for a moment.
"Hate them?" he said. "I only wish to goodness I did."
"But in that case," she began bravely, "why——"