His voice was low, shaken, surcharged and crushed with passion. But he could see things plainly. It was with the certainty, the terrible lucidity of passion that he saw himself. The vision was disastrous to all ideas of integrity, of propriety and honour; it destroyed the long tradition of the Brodricks. But he saw true.
Jane's eyes were searching his while her mouth smiled at him.
"And is it really," she said, "as bad as that?"
"It always is as bad as that, when you're determined to get the thing you want. Luckily for me I've only really wanted one thing."
"One thing?"
"You—or a woman like you. Only there never was a woman like you."
"I see. That's why you care for me?"
"Does it matter why?"
"Not a bit. I only wondered."
He looked at her almost as if he also wondered. Then they were silent. Jane was content to let her wonder die, but Brodrick's mind was still groping in obscurity. At last he seemed to have got hold of something, and he spoke.