painlessly killed.

'No. I shall nurse him.'

'Why should you look on at suffering?'

'Why not--if sometimes he enjoys life?'

'I am thinking of the mistress.'

'Oh, for us,' she said, quickly, 'for me--it is good to be with
suffering.'

As she spoke, she drew herself slightly more erect. Neither tone nor
manner showed softness, made any appeal. The words seemed to have
dropped from her, and the strange pride and dignity she at once threw
around them made a veiling cloud through which only a man entirely
without the finer perceptions would have tried to penetrate. Fenwick,
for all his surface _gaucherie_, did not attempt it. But he attacked
her generalisation. With some vehemence he developed against it
a Neo-pagan doctrine of joy--love of the earth and its natural
pleasures--courage to take and dare--avoidance of suffering--and war
on asceticism. He poured out a number of undigested thoughts, which
showed a great deal of reading, and at least betrayed a personality,
whatever value they might have as a philosophy.

She listened with a charming kindness, laughing now and then, putting
in a humorous comment or two, and never by another word betraying her
own position. But he was more and more conscious of the double self in
her--of the cultivated, social self she was bringing into play for his