He felt a sense of
remoteness, and did not even blush, though knowing certainly that
satire, although it was not in her mind, was sneering at him from behind
the circumstance.
The lady went right on, almost without pause, taking up the thread of
her argument: "But when the angels whisper to us that the best blessings
of earth and heaven are humility and faith and the sort of love that
does not seek its own, do we get up at once and spend our time learning
these things? or do we just go on as before, and think our own way good
enough? 'We are fools and worse, and will not take a telling.'" A smile
broke upon her lip now for the first time as she looked at him.
"'Pig-headed!'" she said.
Caius had seen that smile before. It passed instantly, and she sat
before him with grave, unruffled demeanour; but all his thoughts and
feelings seemed a-whirl. He could not collect his mind; he could not
remember what she had said exactly; he could not think what to answer;
indeed, he could not think at all. There had been a likeness to his
phantastic lady-love of the sea; then it was gone again; but it left him
with all his thoughts confounded. At length--because he felt that he
must look like a fool indeed--he spoke, stammering the first thing that
occurred to him:
"The patient that I have seen did not appear to be in a house that was
ill-ventilated or--or--that is, he was isolated from the rest of the
family.
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