Page:Gissing - The Emancipated, vol. I, 1890.djvu/124

116 have written. When I heard you had come to Naples, I—well, I followed. I might as well be here as anywhere else, and 1 fell a wish to see you."

"Why should you wish to see me? What does it matter to you whether I am well or ill?"

"Yes, it matters, though of course you find it hard to believe."

"Very, when I remember the words with which you last parted from me. If I was hateful to you then, how am I less so now?"

"A man in anger, and especially one of my nature, often says more than he means. It was never you that were hateful to me, though your beliefs and your circumstances might madden me into saying such a thing."

"My beliefs, as I told you then, are a part of myself—are myself."

She said it with irritable insistence—an accent which would doubtless have been significant in the ears of Eleanor Spence.