Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/33

 head at the outer world of which he had with such intensity just renewed his impression.

"Ah," she disappointingly answered, "I don't absolutely say that."

Poor Pendrel again stared. "Then what do you say at all? Do you expect me to renounce for nothing?"

"I don't expect you, as I've perfectly told you, in any degree to renounce. Why should you?" she added. "No one will ever have an idea of what you have lost."

"No one but myself," he said with his eyes on her.

"Oh I think you will least of all."

She had answered so straight that it had almost the sound of levity; by the hint of which he was justly enough irritated. "It's too portentous—what you ask!"

But she found for this her quickest reply. "I don't ask anything. It's you who ask. I only answer. I decline the honour of your hand, and I give my reasons. If I had given none I should have been doubtless less absurd, and my reward is that I'm not really sure I should have been even less cruel. I'm sure," she continued, "but of one thing—or rather perhaps of two: that I'm as insane as you please, but that I'm also as rigid. Don't think, at all events, that you need, or that you possibly can, tell me how my attitude strikes you. Do me the simple justice to believe that I know." 19