He had not for so long a time been impelled
by such agreeable folly that he had sometimes felt the stab of the
thought that he was past it. That it should rise in him again made
him feel young. There was nothing which so irritated him against
Mount Dunstan as his own rebelling recognition of the man's youth, the
strength of his fine body, his high-held head and clear eye.
These things and others it was which swayed him, as was plain to Betty
in the time which followed, to many changes of mood.
"Are you sorry for a man who is ill and depressed," he asked one day,
"or do you despise him?"
"I am sorry."
"Then be sorry for me."
He had come out of the house to her as she sat on the lawn, under a
broad, level-branched tree, and had thrown himself upon a rug with his
hands clasped behind his head.
"Are you ill?"
"When I was on the Riviera I had a fall." He lied simply. "I strained
some muscle or other, and it has left me rather lame. Sometimes I have a
good deal of pain."
"I am very sorry," said Betty. "Very."
A woman who can be made sorry it is rarely impossible to manage. To
dwell with pathetic patience on your grievances, if she is weak and
unintelligent, to deplore, with honest regret, your faults and blunders,
if she is strong, are not bad ideas.
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