But in her case the inadequacy of the usual methods had forced itself upon him.  It was as if the dart being aimed at her, she caught it in her hand in its flight, broke off its point and threw it lightly aside without comment.  Most women cannot resist the temptation to answer a speech containing a sting or a reproach.  It was part of her abnormality that she could let such things go by in a detached silence, which did not express even the germ of comment or opinion upon them.  This, he said, was the result of her beastly sense of security, which, in its turn, was the result of the atmosphere of wealth she had breathed since her birth.  There had been no obstacle which could not be removed for her, no law of limitation had laid its rein on her neck.  She had not been taught by her existence the importance of propitiating opinion.  Under such conditions, how was fear to be learned?  She had not learned it.  But for the devil in the blue between her lashes, he realised that he should have broken loose long ago.

“I suppose I deserved that for making a stupid appeal to sympathy,” he remarked.  “I will not do it again.”

If she had been the woman who can be gently goaded into reply, she would have made answer to this.  But she allowed the observation to pass, giving it free flight into space, where it lost itself after the annoying manner of its kind.

“Have you any objection to telling me why you decided to come to England this year?” he inquired, with a casual air, after the pause which she did not fill in.

The bluntness of the question did not seem to disturb her.  She was not sorry, in fact, that he had asked it.  She let her work lie upon her knee, and leaned back in her low garden chair, her hands resting upon its wicker arms.  She turned on him a clear unprejudiced gaze.

“I came to see Rosy.  I have always been very fond of her.  I did not believe that she had forgotten how much we had loved her, or how much she had loved us.  I knew that if I could see her again I should understand why she had seemed to forget us.”

“And when you saw her, you, of course, decided that I had behaved, to quote my own words—­like a blackguard and a fool.”

“It is, of course, very rude to say you have behaved like a fool, but—­if you’ll excuse my saying so—­that is what has impressed me very much.  Don’t you know,” with a moderation, which singularly drove itself home, “that if you had been kind to her, and had made her happy, you could have had anything you wished for—­without trouble?”

This was one of the unadorned facts which are like bullets.  Disgustedly, he found himself veering towards an outlook which forced him to admit that there was probably truth in what she said, and he knew he heard more truth as she went on.

“She would have wanted only what you wanted, and she would not have asked much in return.  She would not have asked as much as I should.  What you did was not businesslike.”  She paused a moment to give thought to it.  “You paid too high a price for the luxury of indulging the inherited temperament.  Your luxury was not to control it.  But it was a bad investment.”