Perhaps you can forgive me for saying it? You see how I am placed!"
This iron apology which some late scruple had ground out of Thane seemed to
command Daphne's deepest attention. She gave it a moment's silence, then
she said, "There is nothing that hurts one, I think, like being unable to
feel as people take for granted one must and ought to feel." But her home
application of it gave a slight deflection to Thane's meaning which he
firmly corrected.
"I felt all right; so did he, I dare say, but we never let each other know
how we felt. Men don't, as a rule. Your uncle takes for granted that I
knew a lot about him,--his thoughts and feelings; that we were immensely
sympathetic. Perhaps we were, but we didn't know it. We knew nothing of
each other intimately. He never spoke to me of his private affairs but
once, the night before he started. It was at Wood River. Some of us gave
him a little supper. Afterwards we had some business to settle and I was
alone with him in his room. It was then I made my break; and--well, it
ended as I say: we quarreled. It has hurt me since, especially as I was
wrong."
"What can men quarrel about when they don't know each other well? Politics,
perhaps?" Daphne endeavored to give her words a general application.
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