Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/59

 were before him for him to look at. 'It's nice of you to be so sorry for her,' was what he said.

'If she weren't so horribly alive, one wouldn't mind so much.—Aren't you sorry for her?'

'I don't suppose I am. I feel it's a law of nature that an old woman like that should perish rather miserably.'

'But it makes me sorry to think that a vulture should perish miserably.'

'A vulture, perhaps; but not an old woman who's like one. She's never created beauty, or sought truth, or known love; so how can she expect to have anything?'

'You are rather horrible, you know, Dick. Your heart is so hard. Why should you think she's meant nothing more than that? Anyone so alive must have.'

'I don't know that. A vulture is very much alive. Her vitality may all have gone to greed and passion and vanity.'

'She's wanted to be loved, of course; who doesn't? And she's wanted to be happy. She's been dreadfully unhappy; one can see it; and disappointed; and ravaged generally. And now she's like a motor-car shut up in a garage with its engine going and its headlights on, and it makes me uncomfortable to think of her—however wrong she's been.'

Dick was still looking at her. He had said to Madame de Lamouderie that afternoon that she was not æsthetically interesting and Jill had not minded in the least, for she knew how much Dick liked looking at her.