“Oh, don’t,” she said. “You aren’t serious--you can’t be serious!” for, as it seemed to her, semi-ironically her cousin was going through a Greek incantation that they had been told of by their old Greek nurse. “You can’t _want_ to retain that poor little thing’s affections.” “Serious!” Robert Grimshaw muttered. “Oh, Robert,” she said, “what have you done it for? If she’s so frightfully in love with you, and you’re so frightfully in love with her ... and you’ve only got to look at her face to see. I never saw such misery. Isn’t it horrible to think of them steaming away together?” Robert Grimshaw clenched his teeth firmly. “What did I do it for?” he said. His eyes wandered over the form of a lady who passed them in earnest conversation with a porter. “That woman’s going to drop her purse out of her muff,” he said; and then he added sharply: “I didn’t know what it would mean; no, I didn’t know what it would mean. It’s the sort of thing that’s done every day, but it’s horrible.” “It’s horrible,” Ellida repeated. “You oughtn’t to have done it. It’s true I stand for Katya, but if you wanted that child so much and she wanted you so dreadfully, wasn’t it your business to have made her happy, and yourself? If I’d known, _I_ shouldn’t have stood in the way, not even for Katya’s sake. She’s no claim--none that can be set against a feeling like that. She’s gone away; she’s shown no sign.” She stopped, and then she uttered suddenly: “Oh, Robert, you oughtn’t to have done it; no good can come of it.” He turned upon her sharply. “Upon my word,” he said, “you talk like an old-fashioned shopkeeper’s wife. Nothing but harm can come of it! What have we arrived at in our day and our class if we haven’t learnt to do what we want, to do what seems proper and expedient--and to take what we get for it?” They turned and went slowly up the long platform. “Oh, our day and our class,” Ellida said slowly. “It would be better for Pauline to be the old-fashioned wife of a small shopkeeper than what she is--if she cared for him.” They were nearly at the barrier, and he said: “Oh sentimentality, sentimentality! I had to do what seemed best for, us all--that was what I wanted. Now I’m taking what I get for it.” And he relapsed into a silence that lasted until they were nearly at home. And seated beside him in her coupé, Ellida, with the little deep wisdom of the woman of the household, sat beside him in a mood of wonder, of tenderness, and of commiseration.