Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence for some moments, making no effort to master his strong resentment; taking, rather, full possession of its implications. "Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit," he said presently. "She doesn't like people who are as strong as she is and she doesn't like people who might have been loved instead of herself. It narrows the scale of her benevolence, you know. It makes her look perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for jealousy into the bargain."
"Temper, Roger," Meg observed, casting her hard, friendly glance round at him; "I know you think there's no one quite to match Nancy; and I think you're not far wrong. She's the straightest, sweetest-tempered girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn't a prig, and if she's jealous she can't help herself. She _wants_ to love Nancy; she thinks she does love her; she'll always be heavenly to her. She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and ugly. She wishes that Barney weren't so fond of her without thinking about her. She's jealous and she can't help herself--like all the rest of us!" Meg laughed grimly. "When it comes to that we're none of us angels."
It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly, like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the sense of menace. "You know, it's not like all the rest of you," he said. "It's not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn't dislike a person because she was jealous of them. In fact I don't believe Nancy could be jealous. She'd only be hurt."
"It's rather a question of degree, that, isn't it?" said Meg. "In one form of it you're poisoned and in the other you're cut with a knife; and the latter is the prettier way of suffering; doesn't make you come out in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife; and if she's not jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right."
"Why should she like her?" Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg's simile seemed to cut into him, too. "She doesn't need her money or her interest or her love. She doesn't dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere else--as I do."