“You talk of unity,” she said. “You ought to make me understand.”
“I never allow my wife to talk politics,” he said seriously. “For this reason. It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic duties—what you will; her illusions have not been destroyed. She gives me courage to go on. The strain of public life is very great,” he added.
This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold, in the service of mankind.
“I can’t think,” Rachel exclaimed, “how any one does it!”
“Explain, Miss Vinrace,” said Richard. “This is a matter I want to clear up.”
His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her heart beat.
“It seems to me like this,” she began, doing her best first to recollect and then to expose her shivering private visions.
“There’s an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the suburbs of Leeds.”
Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.
“In London you’re spending your life, talking, writing things, getting bills through, missing what seems natural. The result of it all is that she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of sugar, or a little less tea and a newspaper. Widows all over the country I admit do this. Still, there’s the mind of the widow—the affections; those you leave untouched. But you waste you own.”