"That's what we say when we can't get what we want," observed Lavery. "But then, we take what we can get."
"No, I hate that!" she burst out. "That resignation, creeping into old age! No, I can't live that way. That's being beaten!"
"Well, most of us are beaten," Lavery said philosophically, showing his brilliant teeth in a smile. "But then, as I said, there are consolations—"
"No, there's no consolation for that."
She moved, sat down on one of the long sofas, looking straight before her with a fixed absent gaze. Lavery dropped into a chair beside her, contemplative, admiring.
Emotion was becoming to her. It called a faint colour to her cheeks and lips, gave light to her still grey eyes. In some ways she looked strangely young. The lines of her figure were wonderfully girlish.... But also she looked as though she had lived ... not happily, though. He judged a sympathetic silence best at the moment, though there were a lot of things he wanted to say. He would have liked to preach his own gospel of enjoyment, he thought he could be rather eloquent on that theme. But still more he wanted her to talk, so he was quiet, glancing now and then about the big room, whose furniture had too much gilt to suit him. His own taste ran to very quiet though rich effects, and he thought the house "rococo" and out of date. Still, in a way, the gilding and light stuffs and long mirrors made a good setting for her tall figure in its sombre dress and her tragic face.... She sat there, looking into space, apparently forgetting that a pleasant confidant was at her elbow. She hadn't a touch of the ordinary agreeable coquetry, he reflected—didn't seem to realize that people of their age could still be agreeable to one another. Rather barbarous ... yes, both Carlin and his wife were a little uncivilized. They would fit better into a former, doubtless more heroic age, than into the present time. There was a slightly rough-hewn pioneer quality about them. But, perhaps from that very thing, they were both interesting, decidedly so. And he could wait indefinitely for the interest to develop. His calm pulses never hurried now for anything.
His thought reverted to Laurence and to the old gentleman whom he had left drinking whiskey. A queer fish, Laurence's father—he had never known Laurence had a father. A black sheep probably. Laurence was plainly nervous about him. It was the tactful thing to leave them together—even if there hadn't been Mrs. Carlin alone in here, needing somebody to talk to. Laurence neglected her, that was quite evident, and she felt it bitterly.... He wondered, with narrowed gaze, how much she knew about Laurence's life. He could tell her a good deal more than she knew, probably—but, naturally, he wouldn't.