one or the other.
Yet he could not quite understand her look; did she pity him or did she
entreat for herself? For his life he could not answer. The only thing he
knew was that she would follow her path and take for husband the man who
flattered Lady Attlebridge in the inner room. Then she spoke in a low
voice.

"Yes, do come, come and see us afterwards, come as often as you like." He
raised his eyes to hers again. "Because the oftener you come, the more
you'll understand him, and the better you understand him, the better
you'll know why I'm doing what I am."

The soft look of pity or of entreaty vanished from her eyes now. She
seemed to speak in a strong and even defiant confidence. But he met her
with a resolute dissent.

"If you want me, I'll come. But I shan't understand why you did what
you're doing and I shall never see in him what you want me to see." He
looked round and saw Quisante preparing to join them. "Am I to come,
then?" he asked.

Quisante was walking towards them; she answered with a nervous laugh, "I
think you must come sometimes anyhow." Then she raised her voice and said
to Quisante, "I'm telling Mr. Marchmont that I shall expect to see him
often at our house."

Quisante seconded her invitation with more than adequate enthusiasm; if
Marchmont were converted to him, who could still be obstinate? The two
men began to talk, May falling more and more into silence. She did not
accuse Marchmont of deliberate malice, but by chance or the freak of some
mischievous demon everything he said led Quisante on to display his
weaknesses. She knew that Marchmont marked them every one; he was too
well bred to show his consciousness by so much as the most fleeting
glance at her; yet she could have met such a glance with understanding,
yes, with sympathy, and would have had to summon up by artificial effort
the resentment that convention demanded of her. The sight of the two men
brought home to her with a new and an almost terrible sharpness the
divorce between her emotional liking and her intellectual interest. And
in a matter which all experience declared to concern the emotions
primarily, she had elected to give foremost place to the intellect, to
suffer under an ever recurring jar of the feelings for the sake of an
occasional treat to the brain. That was her prospect unless she could
transform the nature of Alexander Quisante. "Marry a nice man of your own
sort, and then be as much interested as you like in S