He shrugged his shoulders cruelly.
‘There is no coping with religious exaltation,’ he answered coldly, with a weary feeling that this woman at his side was quite alien to him in all her thoughts and ways.
Gundred rose. ‘If that is what you call it,’ she replied, with more of her habitual dignity, ‘I think there is no more to be said.’
‘I agree with you. There is nothing more to be said.’
‘And this young man, Ivor Restormel, he is to come here in a day or two?’
‘Yes,’ answered Kingston. ‘I settled it all up with him this afternoon.’
‘And you absolutely refuse to give me what I ask for?’ went on Gundred, returning now, after the heat of the conflict, to the impressive calm of her usual manner. She was preparing a new attack.
‘My dear Gundred,’ answered her husband, more gently now that he saw her more amenable, and therefore more worthy of consideration, ‘I will gladly spend the rest of my life doing what you wish, as long as you ask me for things I can in decency do.’
‘Ah,’ replied Gundred, ‘that is what people always say. They will do everything in the world to please one, except the only thing one asks them for. That is never reasonable or right.’
‘Well, it certainly was not in this case, now, was it, Gundred—honestly, now, was it? You asked me to throw this wretched young man over, to break my promise to him, to upset all his plans, to cast him adrift again after I had offered him our help. And why? All simply because you had been bored at the Hoope-Arkwrights’ tedious dinner, and eaten something which disagreed with you, and made you look on all the world with a bilious, peevish eye, and on your luckless dinner-neighbour in particular. For that is what it all comes to, you know; that is what your wonderful edifice of instincts and suspicions and righteous qualms is founded on.’