Page:Playinthreexiles00joycrich.djvu/89

II]

[Quietly.] Go away. You, and not I, would be necessary to her. Alone as I was before I met her.

[Rubs his hands nervously.] A nice little load on my conscience!

[Abstractedly.] You met my son when you came to my house this afternoon. He told me. What did you feel?

[Promptly.] Pleasure.

Nothing else?

Nothing else. Unless I thought of two things at the same time. I am like that. If my best friend lay in his coffin and his face had a comic expression I should smile. [With a little gesture of despair.] I am like that. But I should suffer too, deeply.

You spoke of conscience Did he seem to you a child only—or an angel?

[Shakes his head.] No. Neither an angel nor an Anglo-Saxon. Two things, by the way, for which I have very little sympathy.

Never then? Never even with her? Tell me. I wish to know.

I feel in my heart something different. I believe that