She took it in silence. She was too much hurt, I thought, to see. I softened it and at the same time made it luminous.
"I mean," I said, "for Grevill to say."
She saw.
"You mean," she said simply, "he isn't great enough?"
I amended it. "For Grevill."
"Grevill," she repeated. I shall never forget how she said it. It was as if her voice reached out and touched him tenderly.
"Lankester is more in his line," I said. "It's a question of temperament, of fitness."
She said she knew that.
"And," I said, "of proportion. If he says what you want him to say about your father, what can he say about Lankester?"
"But if he does Lankester first?"