"How kind you are." She was very pleased. "Now, you—what shall I say?"
"You might say that I have no manners, and not offend me. I have no use for them. But I have feelings, sometimes nice, sometimes horrid."
"I am sure that you couldn't be horrid."
"Don't be sure," he said gravely. "I had rather you weren't. I have done amiss in my day, much amiss; and I shall do it again."
She looked gently at him; her mouth showed the Luini compassion, long-drawn and long-suffering, because it understood. "Don't say that. I don't think you mean it."
He shook his head, but did not cease to watch her. "Oh, but I mean it. When I want a thing, I try to get it. When I see my way, I follow it. It seems like a law of Nature. And I suppose it is one. What else is instinct?"
"Yes," she said, "but I suppose we have feelings in us so that we may realise that other people have them too."
"Yes, yes—or that we may give them to those who haven't got any of their own."
They had become grave, and he, at least, moody. Lucy dared not push enquiry. She had the ardent desire to help and the instinct to make things comfortable on the surface, which all women have, and which makes nurses of them. But she discerned trouble ahead. Urquhart's startling frankness had alarmed her before, and she didn't trust herself to pass it off if it flashed once too often. Flashes like that lit up the soul, and not of the lamp-holder only.