And she added, leaning forward now, and looking at him differently:
“Don’t you ever realize how rare you are, Seymour? There is scarcely anyone left like you, and yet you are not old-fashioned. Do you know that I have never yet met a man who really was a man—”
“Now, now, Adela!”
“No, I will say it! I have never met a real man who, knowing you, didn’t think you were rare. They wouldn’t let you go. Besides, what would you retire to?”
Again she looked at him with a scrutiny which she felt to be morally cruel. She could not refrain from it just then. It seemed to come inevitably from her own misery and almost desperation. At one moment she felt a rush of tenderness for him, at another an almost stony hardness.
“Ah—that’s just it! I dare say it will be better to die in harness.”
“Die!” she said, as if startled.
At that moment the thought assailed her, “If Seymour were suddenly to die!” There would be a terrible gap in her life. Her loneliness then would be horrible indeed unless—she pulled herself up with a sort of fierce mental violence. “I won’t! I won’t!” she cried out to herself.
“You are very strong and healthy, Seymour,” she said, “I think you will live to be very old.”
“Probably. Palaces usually contain a few dodderers. But is anything the matter, Adela? The old dog is very persistent, you know.”