l hear the horrified murmur with which his mother had
rebuked his laugh. For he had laughed--had thought Undine's speech fresh
and natural! Now he felt the ironic rebound of her words. Heaven knew he
had been a disappointment to her; and what was there in her own feeling,
or in her inherited prejudices, to prevent her seeking the same redress
as Mabel Lipscomb? He wondered if the same thought were in his cousin's
mind...

They began to talk of other things: books, pictures, plays; and one
by one the closed doors opened and light was let into dusty shuttered
places. Clare's mind was neither keen nor deep: Ralph, in the past, had
smiled at her rash ardours and vague intensities. But she had his own
range of allusions, and a great gift of momentary understanding; and
he had so long beaten his thoughts out against a blank wall of
incomprehension that her sympathy seemed full of insight.

She began by a question about his writing, but the subject was
distasteful to him, and he turned the talk to a new book in which he had
been interested. She knew enough of it to slip in the right word here
and there; and thence they wandered on to kindred topics. Under the
warmth of her attention his torpid ideas awoke again, and his eyes took
their fill of pleasure as she leaned forward, her thin brown hands
clasped on her knees and her eager face reflecting all his feelings.

There was a moment when the two currents of sensation were merged in
one, and he began to feel confusedly that he was young and she was kind,
and that there was nothing he would like better than to go on sitting
there, not much caring what she said or how he answered, if only she
would let him look at her and give him one of her thin brown hands to
hold. Then the corkscrew in the back of his head dug into him again with
a deeper thrust, and she seemed suddenly to recede to a great distance
and be divided from him by a fog of pain. The fog lifted after a minute,
but it left him queerly remote from her, from the cool room with its
scents and shadows, and from all the objects which, a moment before, had
so sharply impinged upon his senses. It was as though he looked at it
all through a rain-blurred pane, against which his hand would strike if
he held it out to her...

That impression passed also, and he found himself thinking how tired he
was and how little anything mattered. He recalled the unfinished piece
of work on his desk, and for a moment had the odd illusion