"I had almost given up expecting you," she said. "You sent for me," he answered curtly... "Whenever you send for me I will come." She regarded him long and earnestly. There was that in his speech which, despite the harshness of his manner, inclined her towards a softer mood. She no longer saw the picture which Mrs Smythe had unconsciously drawn for her of him driving with his mistress, instead she recognised a man whom life had dealt hardly with accepting obligations which another man in similar circumstances would have ignored. "Thank you," she said at last gently, and with a faintly wondering hesitation. "I did not know... I--felt scarcely justified in writing my request... But,"--she put self-consciousness behind her, and spoke from her heart simply, and with great earnestness--"I could not look on in silence while you deliberately spoilt your life. You were making your way in Cape Town... You could, if you chose, make it anywhere. But you are so indifferent to the world's opinion." "I have never found the world's opinion especially intelligent," he answered bluntly. "If it were worth studying, I might study it." "Is it not, rather," she returned unexpectedly, "that you are over prone to yield to the influence of the hour? ... The opinion of others has never counted for much with you." "You are mistaken," he said. "It is the opinion of others that has made me what I am. In the past I have been far too susceptible of public criticism. Had I been as indifferent as you imagine I should not be the failure that you see to-day." She threw out a protesting hand. "You always speak as though there was nothing ahead, as though you had shuttered all the exits of the soul... When you talk like that I feel that I cannot breathe." "It's only a first impression," he answered sarcastically; "respiration becomes easier when you grow accustomed to the shutters... There _is_ nothing ahead. I reconciled myself to the want of outlook years ago; now I adapt,--not myself to circumstances, but circumstances to suit me. It's astonishing how one can bend events to one's service. The doing so contrives to add a peculiar satisfaction of its own. I don't wish you to suppose that I've been sitting all these years with my head between my hands--the image is depressing. My hands have been otherwise employed. I've had them on the throat of life, and when it has used me spitefully I've pressed it hard in return. I've had some bad knocks, I admit; but, believe me, I'm not beaten yet. And the bruises have healed. The marks may be apparent, but there is no soreness... And those blows served a purpose too. They confirmed me in a resolve I made more than eight years ago,--to live my life independently of my fellows,--to enjoy such pleasures as the moment offered,--to deny myself no single desire that I had the means of gratifying. I have not gone back on that through all these years."