"So I told her, but she goes one better than her Church. Jim, I feel that there's the makings of a first-class tragedy, if we're not very careful ... and very clever. I want to marry her more than anything in the world. There's nothing—I think there's literally nothing I wouldn't do to bring it off. She—well, we went into it pretty thoroughly the other night. I could see she was torn in two.... I—didn't press it. I knew that, if she felt as strongly as that—in her bones—, I shouldn't sweep her off her feet, however much she seemed to be convinced at the moment. It didn't look like being permanent. I had to find some other way out."
He paused and relit his cigar. The door was ajar, and Loring got up to close it; then, instead of going back to his chair, he took a turn up and down the library, with his chin on his chest and his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Three years ago he had come back to that room from his last farewell with Sonia Dainton; he has distractedly summoned George Oakleigh to advise him and had paced up and down, up and down, flinging half-smoked cigarettes into the fire-place. And Oakleigh, whom he had invoked for help, would only tell him brutally that love was over and that he must set his teeth and face it.... Now again no other advice was possible.
"I'm dam' sorry, Jack," he muttered.
His voice quavered in sympathy, because their tragedies had so much in common. He had never lost his heart to any one but Sonia, as Jack had lost his only to Babs Neave; they had been immune for the first thirty years of their life, and they were paying for their self-denial and their affronting indifference to woman. Jack probably enjoyed exposing his soul as little as he had done with George.
"It's rather a mess, isn't it?" said Jack.
"What are you going to do? Look here, we're old enough friends for me to talk freely to you. It hurts like hell at the time, but one does get over it. As you know, I went abroad for some years and tried to forget. I should be—embarrassed, if I sat next to Sonia at dinner to-night, but I shouldn't get the same tug at the heart that I got when I just saw her for a moment in the distance—at the Coronation. You'd better go away."
Jack smiled and then turned his head, finally resting his chin on one fist and staring at the empty fire-place so that his face should be hidden.
"I'm not going away," he answered. "I've every intention of marrying Barbara. I feel that we were made for each other."
"But what are you going to do?" Loring repeated, as he paused again.