"I know you think, Challis, that I am keeping the madre and papa in the dark about what I mean to do. But I'm not, because Sibyl knows, and they can know perfectly well if they like; it's only that they don't choose to know. Besides, what on earth is the use of making scenes, when I've made up my mind? I'll confess when the time comes."
The levity or laxity of Challis's voice is gone from it in his reply, scarcely a sequel to the words just spoken: "When I said that about your little maid, I had no thought that it could possibly apply in your case. The child, remember, is under the legal control of parents. How old is she?—sixteen?..."
"Yes, perhaps—not more, certainly. You mean that I'm...."
"Over twenty-one. I don't say you would assert a legal independence against the wishes of your family. But it separates the two cases. I wouldn't have any hand in getting a very young girl on the stage in any case. And I think I should avail myself of the existing legal ... well!—call it pretext, if you will ... to excuse myself from doing so."
"That's just like you, Challis! You really are a disciple of Mr. Brownrigg's Groschenbauer—what's his name? You deride every existing usage, merely because it exists, and then you make use of it for your own purposes! You're just the same about the parsons, and all religion! You tolerate it, or pose as tolerating it, because you dislike wickedness on the whole, and can't see your way to a substitute—not even to a Metaphysical Check."
Challis's laugh left his face twinkling with paradoxical intention. "I believe I am the only known example," said he deliberately, "of a person apparently of sound mind who has never once succeeded in justifying a single position he has taken up...."
"Don't talk like Felixthorpe! At any rate, you can justify the position you have taken up that I'm more than twenty-one."
"Because you told me!"
"Yes—the day after my birthday. I was twenty-six the day you came to Royd. I remember telling you the day we went to the Rectory. Six months ago! Oh dear!—how the time does run away!"
In obedience to a mysterious law, which dictates that no speech of any good-looking woman to any passable man shall mean to him nothing beyond its obvious meaning, this little reminiscence of Judith assumed an identity. It reminded Challis of the existence of that soul-brush, which had become—it is useless to deny it—so much a part of his relation with Judith that he had ceased to hear the machinery. He denied it, mind you!—denied it systematically. Yet he was indignant with anything that reminded him that it was time to deny it. Plague take this necessity for walking guardedly! How acceptable it would have been to be able to say, "How we enjoyed that walk back through the sunset!" Another type of man—the type that says, "Let Charlotte Eldridge do her worst, and be blowed!"—would have had no scruples on the subject. But Challis was a nervous person, and his Self was perplexing him—very especially now, with poor, dear, stupid Polly Anne making life a weariness, with her tempers and her fancies.