"Which is nonsense, of course. You don't mean that you believe in transmutation in this end of the nineteenth century?" he said impatiently.
"I do not know. I am not scientific. I suppose more wonderful things have been done. If there ever was a time for making gold it is now. All the wonders that poets dreamed of long ago are coming true in prose to-day. Why not the great dream of the alchemists too? At all events, the fancies are bad for him. Suppose there is to be no Pallas-Athena or wonderful clock or miracle gold in his life, what is there left to him? It seems to me he is all the poorer for his delusions. Jack, I will not try to disguise it. I am intensely interested in this poor clockmaker, this mad visionary, if you prefer to call him that."
This was not at all the kind of preface Hanbury wanted to the communications he had to make to her. He felt disconcerted, clumsy, petulant. "I have been so unfortunate as to introduce the cause of all this anxiety to you. It would have been much better for every sake I had not gone back and met the man the second time, much better I should cut a ridiculous figure before all the town to-morrow!" He was growing angry as his speech went on. His own words were inflaming his mind by the implication of his wrongs.
She placed her hand gently on his, and said in a reproachful voice, a voice quite different from the meditative tones in which she had been speaking, "Jack, I did not mean that. You know I did not mean that. Why do you reproach me with thoughts you ought to know I could not harbour?" She had turned in from the window, and was looking at him opposite her in the dim darkness. She was now fully alive to his presence and everything around her.
"No doubt," he said bitterly, "I am ungenerous to you. I am unjust. I am afraid, Dora, I am but an ill-conditioned beast----"
"Jack, that is the most unjust thing you could possibly say to me. In saying it you seem to use words you fancy I would like to use, only I am not brave enough."
"I know you are brave enough for anything. I know it is I who am the coward."
"Jack! Oh, Jack!"
"You told me so yourself to-day. You cannot say I am putting that word into your mouth." He was taking fire.
"Have you no mercy for me, Jack; my Jack?"