“No—I hadn't meant to be rude like that—only you took me by surprise. I've made a wretched muddle of things and, since yesterday afternoon, I 've seen that I'm a complete failure in every possible sense of the word. You are so splendid in all ways—and you are going to have such a splendid life—that we are at the opposite ends of the world, you and I.” She noticed, whilst he was speaking, that his speech was clear of all its little affectations and pomposities. He seemed another man from the strange creature whom she had known before. “No, we are not at the opposite ends of the world. I have felt so miserable all this term. I have felt that in some way I ought to have made things better between you and Archie—Mr. Traill—all that wretched quarreling—and yet I felt so helpless.” “No. That would have been inevitable without you. An older man feeling that he was being jockeyed out of his place by a younger man and the younger man resenting the older man's interference—and neither Traill nor I were, I suppose, very tactful. And there we were pressed up against one another with the whole place working on our nerves. No, you had n't very much to do with it.” But it showed how young she was that she did not see the half-tender, half-ironical look that he flung upon her. In his heart he was wondering whether he would tell her, but something, perhaps her very absence of all self-consciousness, held him back— He went on, softly, almost as though he were talking to himself. “And then, these last weeks it all got on my nerves to such an extent that I was nearly off my head. I wanted to kill Traill. I might have killed him if I had been a stronger man. I felt that it was all so unfair that he should have everything—youth, health, prospects, popularity—everything—and I nothing. I had never been a likable man, perhaps, but there seemed to be no reason. I had it in me, I thought, to do things—” He stopped for a moment and looked at the sea; its gray was being shot with blue and gold and the banks of mist on the horizon were rolling back like gates before the sun. “—And then, yesterday afternoon, when Moy-Thompson was making his speech, I seemed to see suddenly that it was the place—the system—that I had been up against all this time, and not any one person—and suddenly I burst out, scarcely knowing, you know—and I thought I'd done rather a big thing. I thought the other men would be glad that I had led the way. I thought Moy-Thompson would be furious and frightened, but the other men were amused and Moy-Thompson laughed—and suddenly everything cleared and I saw what this place had made of me. They say that it takes a man all a lifetime to know himself—well, I 've got that knowledge early. I know what I am.” She suddenly put out her hand and he caught it fiercely in his. “You 're going to have a fine life,” he said; “there are so many people that you will do good to—but you have been everything to one useless creature.”