"Deuce take you, no! To what we don't, you know, by your wish, ever talk about." "I meant painful to myself," Fleda, with a slight impatience, explained.!

"Have I kept you off to-day?" Fleda sadly shook her head, raising her arms a little and dropping them. The door opened, and the smutty maid, edging in, announced "Mrs. Brigstock!"

"Then of course she won't like your changing." The girl hesitated. "What do people say of that? I mean the 'world.'" Mrs. Gereth shook her head with slow austerity. "You don't believe a word you're saying. I've frightened you, as you've frightened me: you're whistling in the dark to keep up our courage. I do simplify, doubtless, if to simplify is to fail to comprehend the insanity of a passion that bewilders a young blockhead with bugaboo barriers, with hideous and monstrous sacrifices. I can only repeat that you're beyond me. Your perversity's a thing to howl over. However," the poor woman continued with a break in her voice, a long hesitation and then the dry triumph of her will, "I'll never mention it to you again! Owen I can just make out; for Owen is a blockhead. Owen's a blockhead," she repeated with a quiet, tragic finality, looking straight into Fleda's eyes. "I don't know why you dress up so the fact that he's disgustingly weak."