"I assure you, Miss MacAllister, that I had reference only to those with whom one is forced to associate in the casual relations of life. We are not associated by choice, but by the caprice of fortune or by compulsion. And the realization of the compulsion makes the association the more unbearable. We get to hate the very sight of one another."
"I can quite understand that," she replied. "I learned that when I had to spend a year in a very select boarding-school, with a principal and teachers whom I hated, and not one girl of whom I could make a real friend. I was more alone than if I had been like Robinson Crusoe on his island."
"That is it exactly. I should be far less lonely if I were entirely alone or if I had only one companion, so long as that companion were congenial."
She looked sympathetically at him, but did not speak.
"That is the tragedy of life in the Far East," he continued. "That is why so many men take to drink."
She thought of the evening before and of what De Vaux had let out at breakfast. She said nothing; so he went on:
"That is why so many men become inveterate gamblers; why so many who came out with high hopes of accomplishing something end by committing suicide."
As he talked on in this strain, quietly, yet evidently with deep feeling, Miss MacAllister began to ask herself if she had not, in her own mind, judged this young aristocrat too harshly. Perhaps he was not so bad as she had thought him the evening before, when she had refused any longer to play his accompaniments. Perhaps there was some excuse for his being in the condition which De Vaux had blundered out to them that morning.
At any rate, he seemed to be revealing to her another side of his character. She had met him first as the graceful, polished man of the world, a little cynical perhaps, and yet so courteous in his manners towards her as to hide the unpleasant characteristics. She had noted his contemptuous attitude towards Sinclair, his look and tone of studied insult. She had caught a glimpse of the greedy, lustful expression in his eyes as he bent over her at the piano, and, before the evening was done, the leer of intoxication.
But here was another aspect which she had not looked for. Without appearing to seek sympathy, he was appealing to her feelings, and in spite of herself she responded: