This time Maurice realized that he had disappointed her; that his cynicism had carried him too far. Unfortunately the same instinct that told him he had made a fool of himself pushed him on to seek an issue from the situation by wading still further into it. “Come--come,” he said. “You and I must face this matter like people who are really free spirits, and not slaves to any ridiculous superstition. It is noble, it is sweet of you to think of marrying that brute so as to set me free. Of course if I _was_ free, and you were up at the Priory, we should see a great deal more of each other than we do now. I could take one of those vacant cottages close to the church. “Don’t think--Lacrima dear,” he went on, possessing himself of one of her cold hands and trying to recall her attention, “don’t think that I don’t realize what it is to you to have to submit to such a frightful thing. Of course we know how outrageous it is that such a marriage should be forced on you. But, after all, you and I are above these absurd popular superstitions about all these things. Every girl sooner or later hates the man she marries. It is human nature to hate the people we have to live with; and when it comes down to actual reality, all human beings are much the same. If you were forced to marry me, you would probably hate me just as much as you’ll hate this poor devil. After all, what is this business of being married to people and bearing them children? It doesn’t touch your mind. It doesn’t affect your soul. As old Marcus Aurelius says, our bodies are nothing! They are wretched corpses, anyway, dragged hither and thither by our imprisoned souls. It is these damned clergymen, with their lies about ‘sin’ and so forth, that upset women’s minds. For you to be married to a man you hate, would only be like my having to go to this Yeoborough office with people I hate. You will always have, as that honest fellow Epictetus says, your own soul to retire into, whatever happens. Heavens! it strikes me as a bit of humorous revenge,”--here his nostrils twitched again and the hobgoblin look reappeared--“this thought of you and me living peacefully at our ease, so near one another, and at these confounded rascals’ expense!” Lacrima staggered to her feet. “Let me go,” she said. “I want to go back--away--anywhere.” Her look, her gesture, her broken words gave Mr. Quincunx a poignant shock. In one sudden illuminating flash he saw himself as he was, and his recent remarks in their true light. We all have sometimes these psychic search-light flashes of introspection; but the more healthy-minded and well-balanced among us know how to keep them in their place and how to expel them promptly and effectively. Mr. Quincunx was not healthy-minded. He had the morbid sensitive mind of a neurotic Pariah. Hence, in place of suppressing this spiritual illumination, he allowed it to irradiate the gloomiest caverns of his being. He rose with a look of abject and miserable concern.