Row in the grace of
pity. It may lay up merit by due exercise of that."

Richard took off his hat and rode bareheaded, looking away into the
delicious, green gloom. Here, where the wood was thickest, oak and
beech shutting out the sky, clasping hands overhead, the ground beneath
them deep in moss and fern, that gloom was precisely like the colour of
Honoria's eyes. He wished it wasn't so. He tried to forget it. But the
resemblance haunted him. Look where he might, still he seemed to look
into those singular and charming eyes. He talked on determinedly,
putting a force upon himself--too often saying that which, no sooner
was it out of his mouth, than, he wished unsaid.

"I don't want to be too hard on the Row, though. It has a right, after
all, to its little prejudices. Only you see for those who, poor souls,
are different to other people it becomes of such supreme importance to
keep in touch with the average. I have found that out in practice. And
so I refuse to shut my waste humanity away. They must neither hide
themselves nor be hidden, be spared seeing how much other people enjoy
from which they are debarred, or grow over-conscious of their own
ungainliness. That is why I've planted them and their gardens, and
their pigs and their poultry--we'll have a lot of live stock, a second
generation, even of chickens, offers remarkable consolations!--on the
highroad, at the entrance of the little town, where, on a small scale
at all events, they'll see the world that's straight-backed and has its
proper complement of limbs and senses, go by. Envy, hatred, and malice,
and the seven devils of morbidity are forever lying in wait for
them--well--for us--for me and those like me, I mean. In proportion as
one's brought up tenderly--as I was--one doesn't realise the
deprivation and disgust of one's condition at the start. But once
realised, one's inclination is to kill. At least a man's is. A woman
may accept it more quietly, I suppose."

"Richard," Honoria said slowly, "are you sure you don't greatly
exaggerate all--all that?"

He shook his head.

"Thirty years' experience--no, I don't exaggerate! Each time one makes
a fresh acquaintance, each time a pretty woman is just that bit kinder
to one than she would dare be to any man who was not out of it, each
time people are manifestly interested--politely, of course--and form a
circle, make room for one as they did at that particularly disagreeable
Grimshott garden party yesterd