"What?"
"Think that I cared."
"Don't, Molly, for God's sake! I never thought it. I was in an infernal bad temper, that was all."
"So that hasn't made any difference?"
"Of course it hasn't."
"Nothing can make any difference now then, can it?"
It was too much. He got up and walked up and down the room. Poor Mrs. Nevill Tyson, she had put his idea into words. She had suggested that there was a difference, and suggestion is a fatal thing to an unsteady mind. In that moment of fearful introspection he said to himself that it was all very well for her to say there was no difference. There was a difference. She was not exactly lying on a bed of roses; but in the nature of things her lot was easier than his. There was no comparison between the man's case and the woman's. He had not sunk into that serene apathy which is nine-tenths of a woman's virtue. He was not an invalid—neither was he a saint. It is not necessary to be a saint in order to be a martyr; poor devils have their martyrdom. Why could not women realize these simple facts? Why would they persist in believing the impossible?
His face was very red when he turned round and answered. "I can't talk about it, Molly. God knows what I feel."
This was the way he helped to support that little fiction of the man of deep and strong emotions, frost-bound in an implacable reserve.
He took up the book again, and she fell asleep at the sound of the reading. He sat and watched her.