"Yes, of course," he went on sardonically, "you know that too. You know that I loathe and detest life—that I hate the morning because it begins a new day. Oh, I am bored to extinction, you know all that, you most exasperating woman. I hate"—he suddenly seemed to see that he was giving her pain, and the next words were muttered to himself—"no, I love the pity in your eyes."
The graceful figure sitting there trembled a little, and the white hands covered the eyes again.
"But," he went on quickly in a louder voice, "the pity's no good. You might as well expect me to command an army to-morrow, or become an efficient Prime Minister, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Roman Catholic Cardinal, or anything else that is impossible, as become the sort of man you would like me to be. You know so perfectly well," he laughed, "how rotten I am; you are astonished if you find me do any sort of good—you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock under the old mulberry tree—your first long skirt—and you saw that I was no good, and you were perfectly right, but, after all, what is your life to be now?"
Rose got up from the stool and rested one hand on the marble mantelpiece. She needed some help, some physical support.
"Edmund," she said, "I don't think I dwell much on the future; I leave all in God's hands. I have been through a good deal now, you must not expect too much of me." She paused. "But what you have said to me about yourself is nonsense; I wish you would not talk like that. You are only forty. You are very clever, very rich, you have the right sort of ambition although you won't say so, and you are, oh! so kind. Couldn't you do something, have some real interest?" He growled inarticulately. "Is it of no use to ask you just to think it over?"
"None whatever," he said firmly and cheerfully.
The gong sounded in the hall for luncheon.