“And I care so dreadfully much,” she went on.  “It is the story of the darling little green jade elephant over again—­like its being broken and spoilt.  Only now I’m grown up I don’t give in and let it make me ill.  There was a time even of that—­of illness, I mean—­at first just before you came to The Hard last autumn.  But I wouldn’t suffer it, I would not let the illness go on.  I got over that.  But then a second crisis occurred soon after we came here; and I thought Henrietta’s kindness opened a way out.  So I rushed about whenever and wherever she invited me to rush.  But as I told you this evening—­just before we had our two dances, you remember.”

“Am I likely to forget!” Carteret murmured under his breath.

“The rushing about has not proved a success.  I thought it would help to stifle certain longings and keep me nearer to my father—­more at one with him.  But it didn’t, it made me neglect him.  You see—­you see”—­the words were dragged from her, as by active suffering and distress of mind—­“I had to choose between him and another person.  One cannot serve two masters.  I choose him.  His claim was the strongest in duty.  And I love to see him satisfied and peaceful.  He always ranked first in everything I felt and did ever since I can remember; and I so want him to stay first.  But I have been pulled two ways, and seem to have got all astray somehow lately.  I haven’t been really true to myself any more than to him—­only frivolous and busy about silly pleasures.”

“Don’t let the frivolity burden your precious conscience,” Carteret comfortably told her, touched by the pathos of her self-reproach.  For her sincerity was surely, just now, unimpeachable and she a rare creature indeed!  Love, he could less than ever banish; but surely he might utterly banish distrust and fear?—­“As frivolity goes, dear witch, and greed of pleasure, yours have been innocent enough both in amount and in quality, heaven knows!”

“I should like to believe so—­but all that’s relative, isn’t it?  The real wrongness of what you do, depends upon the level of rightness you start from, I mean.”

“Insatiable casuist!” Carteret tenderly laughed at her.

And with that, by common though unspoken consent, they walked onward again.

Even while so doing, however, both were sensible that this resumption of their homeward journey marked a period in, rather than the conclusion of, their conversation.  Some outside compelling force—­so in any case it appeared to Carteret—­encompassed them.  It was useless to turn and double, indulge in gently playful digression.  That force would inevitably make them face the innermost of their own thought, their own emotion, in the end.  In obedience to which unwelcome conviction, Carteret presently brought himself to ask her: 

“And about this other person—­for we have wandered a bit from the point at issue, haven’t we?—­whose interests as I gather clash, for some reason, with those of your father, and whose pride and honour you are so jealously anxious to safeguard.”