"No, I felt that. But I felt, too, as if it would be cruel to stop short, unworthy in us."
"In us?"
"Yes. You let me go to Africa. You might have asked me, you might even have told me, not to go. I did not think of it at the time. Everything went so quickly. But I have thought of it since. And, knowing that, realizing it, I feel that you had your part, a great part, in Emile's rescue. For I do believe, Maurice, that if I had not gone he would have died."
"Then I am glad you went."
He spoke perfunctorily, almost formally. Hermione felt chilled.
"It seemed to me that, having begun to do a good work, it would be finer, stronger, to carry it quite through, to put aside our own desires and think of another who had passed through a great ordeal. Was I wrong, Maurice? Emile is still very weak, very dependent. Ought I to have said, 'Now I see you're not going to die, I'll leave you at once.' Wouldn't it have been rather selfish, even rather brutal?"
His reply startled her.
"Have you—have you ever thought of where we are?" he said.
"Where we are!"
"Of the people we are living among?"