"Do you think that is a universal rule, Mr. Carteret?"
He saw that he had made a tactical blunder, beat a hasty retreat, and executed a flank attack:
"I assure you, Miss MacAllister, that I had reference only to those with whom one is forced to associate in the casual relations of life. We are not associated by choice, but by the caprice of fortune or by compulsion. And the realization of the compulsion makes the association the more unbearable. We get to hate the very sight of one another."
"I can quite understand that," she replied. "I learned that when I had to spend a year in a very select boarding-school, with a principal and teachers whom I hated, and not one girl of whom I could make a real friend. I was more alone than if I had been like Robinson Crusoe on his island."
He was quick to pursue the advantage:
"That is it exactly. I should be far less lonely if I were entirely alone or if I had only one companion, so long as that companion were congenial."
She looked sympathetically at him, but did not speak.
"That is the tragedy of life in the Far East," he continued. "That is why so many men take to drink."
She thought of the evening before and of what De Vaux had let out at breakfast. She said nothing; so he went on:
"That is why so many men become inveterate gamblers; why so many who came out with high hopes of accomplishing something end by committing suicide."