“You will for a couple of years, at least,” he said kindly. “But you may be able to pay it back afterwards.”
This consoled her, and she began to build great schemes. On another occasion she said to him irrelevantly:—
“Do you think I ought to write to Everard?” She had raised him by this time to the position of father confessor. A certain feminine weakness in Joyce’s nature, developing gradually, through his intercourse with her, into a finer sensitiveness, made it easy for her to give him her confidence, to speak with him much as she used to speak with Geraldine. And yet, he being a man, his utterances on such questions, had for her all their masculine weight.
“It is a matter entirely of your own inclination,” he replied oracularly.
“But I don’t know what my inclination is,” said Yvonne. “Everard once told me that it was a much harder thing to know what one’s duty was than to do it when you know what it is.”
“He was plagiarising from George Eliot,” said Joyce, not ill-pleased at a malicious hit at the Bishop. And then, teasingly to Yvonne: “And I’m sure they both put it a little more grammatically.”
“I won’t talk grammar,” cried Yvonne. “I always hated it. It is silly stuff. You understood perfectly what I meant, did n’t you?”
“Perfectly,” said Joyce.
“Then what’s the good of grammar?” cried Yvonne, triumphantly. “But you make me forget what I was going to say. It was something quite clever. Oh yes! Substitute ‘inclination’ for ‘duty,’ and you have my difficulty. Now do tell me what I am to do.”
“Well, wait until you hear from Everard, and then write him a nice long letter,” said Joyce.