But it was long before he could collect energy enough to talk.  When he did, he made an effort to tell her the story of the boy’s death, and the father’s self-destruction.  He told it leaning forward in his chair, his eyes on the ground, his hands loosely joined, his voice broken and labored.  Julie listened, gathering from his report an impression of horror, tragic and irremediable, similar to that which had shaken the balance of his own mind.  And when he suddenly looked up with the words, “And now I am expected to take their place—­to profit by their deaths!  What rightful law of God or man binds me to accept a life and a responsibility that I loathe?” Julie drew back as though he had struck her.  His face, his tone were not his own—­there was a violence, a threat in them, addressed, as it were, specially to her.  “If it were not for you,” his eyes seemed to say, “I could refuse this thing, which will destroy me, soul and body.”

She was silent, her pulses fluttering, and he resumed, speaking like one groping his way: 

“I could have done the work, of course—­I have done it for five years.  I could have looked after the estate and the people.  But the money, the paraphernalia, the hordes of servants, the mummery of the life!  Why, Julie, should we be forced into it?  What happiness—­I ask you—­what happiness can it bring to either of us?”

And again he looked up, and again it seemed to Julie that his expression was one of animated hostility and antagonism—­antagonism to her, as embodying for the moment all the arguments—­of advantage, custom, law—­he was, in his own mind, fighting and denying.  With a failing heart she felt herself very far from him.  Was there not also something in his attitude, unconsciously, of that old primal antagonism of the man to the woman, of the stronger to the weaker, the more spiritual to the more earthy?

“You think, no doubt,” he said, after a pause, “that it is my duty to take this thing, even if I could lay it down?”

“I don’t know what I think,” she said, hurriedly.  “It is very strange, of course, what you say.  We ought to discuss it thoroughly.  Let me have a little time.”

He gave an impatient sigh, then suddenly rose.

“Will you come and look at them?”

She, too, rose and put her hand in his.

“Take me where you will.”

“It is not horrible,” he said, shading his eyes a moment.  “They are at peace.”

With a feeble step, leaning on her arm, he guided her through the great, darkened house.  Julie was dimly aware of wide staircases, of galleries and high halls, of the pictures of past Delafields looking down upon them.  The morning was now far advanced.  Many persons were at work in the house, but Julie was conscious of them only as distant figures that vanished at their approach.  They walked alone, guarded from all intrusion by the awe and sympathy of the unseen human beings around them.