Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/37

 for the high idea, the intense interest, the peculiar beauty. I should see," said Mrs. Coyne, "what it makes of a man."

"You would indeed!" her visitor brooded.

She laughed out at his tone. "Ah but don't put it as a threat—as if you'd be Nick o' the Woods, and, to punish me for what I should have kept you from, wish to beat out my brains. You'd really be as pleased with me, I feel sure, as I should with you, and we'd grow old together in honour and patriotism." She became, however, the next moment braver; which had the effect of showing her as kinder. "It's all, when one considers, the fault of your peculiar situation—added, I mean, to the turn of your mind. The result of the combination of your starved state (which I call, you see, to oblige you, what you would call it) and your natural passion for everything old is as calculable as to-morrow's dawn." It was the sort of fact one could put in a nutshell. "The only way for you not to remain is not to go."

"You'll see whether I remain," Ralph said as drily as he could.

"Oh but do! Do," she earnestly repeated. "The great thing is after all not to spoil it—whichever way you take it; and isn't it also, when one thinks, much better you should be perfect for yourself than for me?"

"How you must, fortunately, hate and loathe me!"—Ralph returned to that with the same 23