suspicion that you are forced upon anybody, nor has anybody an
uncomfortable suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you
are forced upon her. YOU can choose for yourself. Life, for YOU,
is a plum with the natural bloom on; it hasn't been over-carefully
wiped off for YOU--'

'Don't stop, dear fellow. Go on.'

'Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings, Jack?'

'How can you have hurt my feelings?'

'Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill! There's a strange
film come over your eyes.'

Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out his right hand, as
if at once to disarm apprehension and gain time to get better.
After a while he says faintly:

'I have been taking opium for a pain--an agony--that sometimes
overcomes me. The effects of the medicine steal over me like a
blight or a cloud, and pass. You see them in the act of passing;
they will be gone directly. Look away from me. They will go all
the sooner.'

With a scared face the younger man complies by casting his eyes
downward at the ashes on the hearth. Not relaxing his own gaze on
the fire, but rather strengthening it with a fierce, firm grip upon
his elbow-chair, the elder sits for a few moments rigid, and then,
with thick drops standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of his