For a moment she flushed.

"You always have abused yourself."

"Because I know what's in your thoughts, and when I am with you I can't
help expressing them--there!" he concluded defiantly, and crossed and
uncrossed his legs again.

"Edmund, that isn't one bit, one little bit true. But I do wish you were
happier."

"Yes, of course," he went on sardonically, "you know that too. You know
that I loathe and detest life--that I hate the morning because it begins
a new day. Oh, I am bored to extinction, you know all that, you most
exasperating woman. I hate"--he suddenly seemed to see that he was
giving her pain, and the next words were muttered to himself--"no, I
love the pity in your eyes."

The graceful figure sitting there trembled a little, and the white hands
covered the eyes again.

"But," he went on quickly in a louder voice, "the pity's no good. You
might as well expect me to command an army to-morrow, or become an
efficient Prime Minister, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Roman
Catholic Cardinal, or anything else that is impossible, as become the
sort of man you would like me to be. You know so perfectly well," he
laughed, "how rotten I am; you are astonished if you find me do any sort
of good--you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you
know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you
had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock