“I am a part of all that I have met.
“You remember? Of course Eugenia had a great influence upon me. But for her I should probably have been quite a different sort of man. But still I can see the good it did me now without any bitterness. I am inexpressibly thankful that she is so much happier, that she seems to be growing into—her life, as it were. When she was unhappy I must confess I was bitter—bitter to think I had no right to interfere. But that has all past by. I am rather lonely, that is about all I have any right to complain of. If she had not married it might have been different—there is a sort of doggedness about me—I believe I should have gone on hoping against hope. But as it is, I feel it rather hard sometimes.”
“What?” asked Roma, in some bewilderment.
“Why, that I should be doomed to stay outside always, as it were. You don’t suppose I have any dislike to the idea of being happy like other people? You don’t suppose it is from choice I remain homeless and lonely, do you, Miss Eyrecourt?”
He looked at her half laughingly, yet earnestly too.
Roma’s face fell. Then after all, she thought, her one hero was no hero; already his love for Eugenia was replaced by some other apparently equally hopeless attachment. It was disappointing.
“Why do you look so grave?” he inquired. “Have I offended you?”
“Offended me! What have I to do with it?” she replied. “Of course not. To tell you the truth I felt just a little disappointed—a nice confession for an unromantic person to make—that—that you had ‘got over it,’ as it is called, so completely. You were my model of constancy. I shall think life more prosaic than ever now. And, to turn to prose, what a pity you a second time made an unlucky venture! Could you not have been more prudent? That is to say, if the obstacles whose existence you infer are insuperable. As to that, of course I can’t judge.”
She quickened her steps a little as she spoke. It seemed to Gerald she was eager to make an end of the conversation. Amused, yet much annoyed at her misapprehension, his wish to right himself in her eyes drove him further than he had intended.
“Miss Eyrecourt,” he began, not without a slight irritation in his tone, “I wish you would do me justice. Is it possible you don’t understand me? Do not you see that one of the things which most attracted me, which drew forth my admiration and gratitude, arose from the very strength of my care for Eugenia? It was that which first drew us together—your goodness to her, I mean—it was that which showed me how generous and noble you are. And yet, unfortunately, your knowledge of my feelings to her is one of the very things that make me hopeless, even if there were no insuperable practical objections. Not that I would have concealed the old state of things from you in any case had you not happened to know them, if I had ventured to try my chance with you. But they were forced upon you so unfortunately. It would be impossible for you ever to think of me in a different light. How could I ever convince you that the heart I offered was worth having? It must seem to you a poor wretched battered-about thing—not that, of course, it was ever worth your having.”