“Ah, you’ve already noticed that!” Mr Kane interrupted.
“Noticed what?”
“That we can forgive people their injurious conjectures when they’re wrong rather than when they’re right?”
“No, I hadn’t noticed,” Ray confessed; and he added, “I was only thinking how impossible that was for me in a place where I haven’t spoken to a woman yet.”
If Mr. Kane tasted the bitterness in a speech which Ray tried to carry off with a laugh, his words did not confess it. “It wasn’t a reasoned conjecture, and I don’t defend it; I’m only too glad to escape from it without offence. When I was of your age, a slight from a woman was the only thing that could have kept me from any pleasure that offered itself. But I understand that now youth is made differently.”
“I don’t see why,” said Ray, and he quelled a desire he had to boast of his wounds; he permitted himself merely to put on an air of gloom.
“Why, I’ve been taught that modern society and civilization generally has so many consolations for unrequited affection that young men don’t suffer from that sort of trouble any more, or not deeply.”
Ray was sensible that Mr. Kane’s intrusiveness was justifiable upon the ground of friendly interest; and he was not able to repel what seemed like friendly interest. “It may be as you say, in New York; I’ve not been here long enough to judge.”
“But in Midland things go on in the old way? Tell me something about Midland, and why any one should ever leave Midland for New York?”
“I can’t say, generally speaking,” answered Ray, with pleasure in Kane’s pursuit, “but I think that in my case Midland began it.”