Jasper Penny had told himself that his new dissatisfaction was merely the result of his accumulating years; but, beyond the fact that such an increase might have brought him different and keener perceptions, that explanation was entirely inadequate.  He wanted a quality beyond his experience, beyond, he realized, any material condition—­Susan Brundon, yes; but it was no comparatively simple urge of sex, the natural selection of the general animal creation.  There was no question of passionate importunities; those, here, would be worse than futile; all that he desired was beyond words, moving in obedience to a principle of which he had not caught the slightest glimpse.  Yet, confident of his ultimate victory, he maintained the dominating presence of a black Penny.

Susan Brundon had sunk back into the depths of her capacious chair; she seemed utterly exhausted, as if she had been subjected to a prolonged brutal strain.  But still her eyes sought him steady in their hurt regard.  “There is so much that I can give you,” he blundered, immediately conscious of the sterility of his phrase.  “I mean better things—­peace and attention and—­and understanding.  I won’t attempt any of the terms usual, commonplace, at such moments, you must take them, where they are worthy, for granted.  I only tell you a lamentable fact, and ask you to marry me, promise you the tenderest care—­”

“I know that,” she replied, with obvious difficulty, hesitation.  “I’ll not thank you.  It is terribly difficult for me.  I’d like to answer you as you wish, I mean reply to—­to your request.  But the other, the child, dragged about; there was such a distrust, a wariness, in her face.”

“There is no good in thinking of that alone,” he stated, with a return of his customary decision.  “No one can walk backwards into the future.  Try to consider only the immediate question, what I have asked you—­will you marry me?”

“Is that all you have to explain?” she asked.  “Is there, now, no one else that counts?” The edge of a cold dread entered his hopes.  “If you refer to the child’s mother,” he said stiffly, “she is amply well taken care of, you need waste no sentimental thoughts on her.”

“Ah!” Susan exclaimed, shrinking.  Her hands closed tightly on the wide silk of her skirt.  The fear deepened within him; it would be impossible to explain Essie to the woman before him.  Essie, falsely draped in conventional attributes, defied him to utter the simple truth.  He raged silently at his impotence, the inhibition that prevented the expression of what might be said for himself.  Essie Scofield had, like every one else, lived in the terms of her being, attracting to herself what essentially she was; it was neither bad nor good, but inevitable.  His contact with her had been the result of mutual qualities, qualities that were no longer valid.  Yet to say that would place him in a damnable light, give him the aspect of the meanest opportunist.  Susan breathed, “That poor woman.”  It was precisely what he had expected, feared—­the adventitious illusion!  He had an impulse to describe to her, even at the price of his own condemnation, the condition in which he had found Eunice; but that too perished silently.  Jasper Penny grew restive under the unusual restraint of his position.