ake what comes in this
topsy-turvy world. I believe in saying out:--that the more one thinks
about life the worse it becomes. There are only two kinds of happiness
in this world--a wooden post's and Prometheus's. And who ever heard
of any one having the impudence to be kind to Prometheus? As for a
miserable "medium" like me, not quite a post and leagues and leagues
from even envying a Prometheus, she's better for the powder without the
jam. But that's all nothing. What I can't help thinking--and it's not a
bit giving my brother away, because we both think it--that it was partly
our thoughtlessness that added at least something to--to the rest. It
was perfectly absurd. He saw you were ill; he saw--he must have seen
even in that first Sunday talk--that your nerves were all askew. And
who doesn't know what "nerves" means nowadays? And yet he deliberately
chattered. He loves it--just at large, you know, like me. I told him
before I came out that I intended, if I could, to say all this. And now
it's said you'll please forgive me for going back to it.'

'Please don't talk about forgiveness. But when you say he chattered, you
mean about Sabathier, of course. And that, you know, I don't care a fig
for now. We can settle all that between ourselves--him and me, I mean.
And now tell me candidly again--Is there any "prey" in my face now?'

She looked up fleetingly into his eyes, leant back her head and laughed.
'"Prey," there never was a glimpse.'

'And "change"?' Their eyes met again in an infinitely brief, infinitely
bewildering argument.

'Really, really, scarcely perceptible,' she assured him, 'except, of
course, how horribly, horribly ill you look. And that only seems to
prove to me you must be hiding something else. No illusion on earth
could--could have done that to your face.'

'You think, I know,' he persisted, 'that I must be persuaded and
cosseted and humoured. Yes, you do; it's my poor old sanity that's
really in both your minds. Perhaps I am--not absolutely sound. Anyhow.
I've been watching it in your looks at each other all the time. And I
can never, never say, never tell you what you have done for me. But you
see, after all, we did win through; I keep on telling myself that. So
that now it's purely from the most selfish and practical motives that I
want you to be perfectly frank with me. I have to go back, you know; and
some of them, one or two of my friends I mean, are not all on my side.
Think of me as I was w