Part 58 (1/2)
”Oh, no, it couldn't.”
And she added, leaning forward now, and looking at him differently:
”Don't you ever realize how rare you are, Seymour? There is scarcely anyone left like you, and yet you are not old-fas.h.i.+oned. Do you know that I have never yet met a man who really was a man--”
”Now, now, Adela!”
”No, I will say it! I have never met a real man who, knowing you, didn't think you were rare. They wouldn't let you go. Besides, what would you retire to?”
Again she looked at him with a scrutiny which she felt to be morally cruel. She could not refrain from it just then. It seemed to come inevitably from her own misery and almost desperation. At one moment she felt a rush of tenderness for him, at another an almost stony hardness.
”Ah--that's just it! I dare say it will be better to die in harness.”
”Die!” she said, as if startled.
At that moment the thought a.s.sailed her, ”If Seymour were suddenly to die!” There would be a terrible gap in her life. Her loneliness then would be horrible indeed unless--she pulled herself up with a sort of fierce mental violence. ”I won't! I won't!” she cried out to herself.
”You are very strong and healthy, Seymour,” she said, ”I think you will live to be very old.”
”Probably. Palaces usually contain a few dodderers. But is anything the matter, Adela? The old dog is very persistent, you know.”
”I've been feeling a little depressed.”
”You stay alone too much, I believe.”
”It isn't that. I was out at the theatre with a party only last night.
We went to _The Great Lover_. But he wasn't like you. You are a really great lover.”
And again she leaned forward towards him, trying to feel physically what surely she was feeling in another way.
”The greatest in London, I am sure.”
”I don't know,” he said, very simply. ”But certainly I have the gift of faithfulness, if it is a gift.”
”We had great discussions on love and jealousy last night.”
”Did you? Whom were you with?”
”I went with Beryl Van Tuyn and Francis Braybrooke.”
”An oddly uneven pair!”
”Alick Craven was with us, too.”
”The boy I met here one Sunday.”
Lady Sellingworth felt an almost fierce flash of irritation as she heard him say ”boy.”
”He's hardly a boy,” she said. ”He must be at least thirty, and I think he seems even older than he is.”
”Does he? He struck me as very young. When he went away with that pretty girl it was like young April going out of the room with all the daffodils. They matched.”