'Nothing,' he said quietly. 'Between them and me there is a great gulf fixed. I watch them pass, and I say to myself: "There are the living—that is how they look, how they speak! Realise once for all that you have nothing to do with them. Life is theirs—belongs to them. You are already outside it. Go your way, and be a spectre among the active and the happy no longer."'
He leant his back against the gate. Did he see her? Was he conscious of her at all in this rare impulse of speech which had suddenly overtaken one of the most withdrawn and silent of human beings? All her airs dropped off her; a kind of fright seized her; and involuntarily she laid her hand on his arm.
'Don't—don't—Mr. Langham! Oh, don't say such things! Why should you be so unhappy? Why should you talk so? Can no one do anything? Why do you live so much alone? Is there no one you care about?'
He turned. What a vision! His artistic sense absorbed it in an instant—the beautiful tremulous lip, the drawn white brow. For a moment he drank in the pity, the emotion, of those eyes. Then a movement of such self-scorn as even he had never felt swept through him. He gently moved away; her hand dropped.
'Miss Leyburn,' he said, gazing at her, his olive face singularly pale, 'don't waste your pity on me, for Heaven's sake. Some madness made me behave as I did just now. Years ago the same sort of idiocy betrayed me to your brother; never before or since. I ask your pardon, humbly,' and his tone seemed to scorch her, 'that this second fit of ranting should have seized me in your presence.'
But he could not keep it up. The inner upheaval had gone too far. He stopped and looked at her—piteously, the features quivering. It was as though the man's whole nature had for the moment broken up, become disorganised. She could not bear it. Some ghastly infirmity seemed to have been laid bare to her. She held out both her hands. Swiftly he caught them, stooped, kissed them, let them go. It was an extraordinary scene—to both a kind of lifetime.
Then he gathered himself together by a mighty effort.
'That was adorable of you,' he said with a long breath. 'But I stole it—I despise myself. Why should you pity me? What is there to pity me for? My troubles, such as I have, are my own making—every one.'
And he laid a sort of vindictive emphasis on the words. The tears of excitement were in her eyes.
'Won't you let me be your friend?' she said, trembling, with a kind of reproach. 'I thought—the other night—we were to be friends. Won't you tell me——'