"You are too soft-hearted, Scroop. Really, you must forgive my laughing! But you are so very—Arcadian!" Challis waited visibly for an explanation. "Couldn't you see that what this dear good woman will want, when she gets tired, will be a golden bridge to come back across? Something to save her face! She'll never admit she was wrong. But for the sake of the children, don't you see? We are in the region of high unselfish motive at once."
Marianne would never admit she was wrong! Very likely; but the point was, was she wrong? Challis caught himself almost taking sides with Penelope against Calypso. The point was danger-point in these seas. Never was a stranger clash in a human soul than the one Challis was conscious of when he half resented the tone in which the woman he had a passion for spoke of the one for whom he had an affection. We had nearly written "the one whom he loved." But surely he loved Judith?—or what is the vocabulary of the Poets worth? The ambiguities of language have been beforehand with the story, and it cannot stop to préciser them.
"Marianne will not persist a moment after she is convinced she is wrong." He spoke a little stiffly—almost a mild censure of Calypso. But as a set-off he took for granted that Penelope was wrong, past contention.
"Perhaps I should have said she will never believe she was wrong. Better than 'admit.'" This was spoken with placid indifference. One might have thought the speaker absorbed in the flashing of brilliants on the beautiful hand she was holding to catch a sunset-ray from the back-window; the palm, as she shifted it about, showing each finger outlined with transmitted rosy light. Challis tried to reason away its witchery—to quash its jurisdiction. But it was a fatal hand. "Go on telling me," said its owner. "Tell me more about Marianne. What do you suppose she thinks?"
"I have no right to suppose she thinks any more than she said in her letter. I told you in my letter all I think I had any right to repeat."
"And I have no right to be inquisitive. But the letter spoke plainly. I am convinced of it."
"The letter was indignant with me for showing her letter to you before, as she supposed, I had read it myself."
"Before, as she supposed." This was mere repetition of the phrase, as a writer from dictation might have spoken. She turned her eyes full on him. "You hadn't read it, Scroop," she said.
"I had to the best of my belief, at the time I showed it to you." He is a little nettled, and she sees it. He embarks on self-justification—a thing one should never do. "There was not a single word in what I supposed the letter contained that you might not have read. My statement that I had not read the words on the back was entitled to some consideration. I never put anything of importance away in a postscript, where it may be overlooked." He stopped abruptly, feeling irrelevant.
"Because you are an eminent author! We mustn't forget that." Judith's laugh lightened the conversation. "No, no, Scroop! you haven't got a leg to stand on, and you had better admit it. You oughtn't to have shown me the letter."