"Oh, don't blame me," he returned. "Seeing you as I have all the while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to your living in this isolation. You've wanted, not unnaturally and very cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what the Duke's been up to." Her voice was suffocated as she said: "Oh, stop, please! Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do." Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you." She made a dismissing gesture. "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want you." He smiled benignly on her. "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you through." "See me through what?" "Through your divorce," he said practically. "But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with just a little hesitation in his voice: "Oh, not so much as yours. But I'm the friend of both of you in this. It's the best thing all round." The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he meant what he said. "You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged. "Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical. I'm going henceforth to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point." She put out her hand beseechingly. "Oh, leave that for the rest of us. It quite spoils you." "I don't pretend to think--" He made his gaze small as he looked past her in an attitude of reflection. "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an ideal way of looking at things. But there is not much idealism in the modern divorce, is there?" The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near him. "Are you quite serious?" she asked. "But I know that you are not. Let me at least think so. Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked piteously at him. "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and yours is such an understanding atmosphere." Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped himself now to sugar. "Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "One can't live on air, you know. And I have been of the most colorless kind." "Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him. "I've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "And the earth's after all where we belong, Duchess. Stand firm, keep to your own part of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you off your little foothold." "Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion. The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked at the lady.