"Then why do you do it?"
"Because," he said slowly, "there is a shadow which dogs me. I am
always trying to escape--and it is always hard on my heels. You are a
woman, Catherine, and you don't know the suffering of the most
intolerable form of ennui--loneliness."
"And do you?" she asked, looking at him with softening eyes.
"Always. It rode with me in the turnkey frill--and sometimes perhaps it
lifted my spurs--why not? And at these suppers you speak of, well, they
are all very gay--it is I only who have bidden them, who reap no profit.
For whosoever may sit there the chair at my side is always empty."
"You speak sadly," she said, "and yet--"
"Yet what?"
"To hear you talk, Arranmore, with any real feeling about anything is
always a relief," she said. "Sometimes you speak and act as though
every emotion which had ever filled your life were dead, as though you
were indeed but the shadow of your former self. Even to know that you
feel pain is better than to believe you void of any feeling whatever."
"Then you may rest content," he told her quietly, "for I can assure you
that pain and I are old friends and close companions.
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