She is never a second out of my thoughts. And yet I am so little of a
man that I let her come near death and never try to save her."
"But, confound it, man, it may have been mere absence of mind. You were
always an extraordinarily plucky chap." Wratislaw spoke irritably, for
it seemed to him sheer folly.
Lewis looked at him imploringly. "Can you not understand?" he cried.
Wratislaw did understand, and suddenly. The problem was subtler than he
had thought. Weakness was at the core of it, weakness revealed in
self-deception and self-accusation alike, the weakness of the finical
dreamer, the man with the unrobust conscience. But the weakness which
Lewis arraigned himself on was the very obvious failing of the diffident
and the irresolute. Wratislaw tried the path of boisterous
encouragement.
"Get up, you old fool, and come down to the house. You a coward! You
are simply a romancer with an unfortunate knack of tragedy." The man
must be laughed out of this folly. If he were not he would show the
self-accusing front to the world, and the Manorwaters, Alice,
Stocks--all save his chosen intimates--would credit him with a cowardice
of which he had no taint.
Arthur and George, resigned now to the inevitable lady, had seen in the
incident only the anxiety of a man for his beloved, and just a hint of
the ungenerous in his treatment of Mr.
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