The one
thing left him was a miserable courtesy, on which he must somehow
depend. He forced a sort of smile, and began to talk--his own voice
audible to him, strained and ugly, like the voice of some querulous
ghost.
"Ah," he said, "as one gets older, one can't always command one's
moods. Vexed? Of course, I am not vexed--what put that into your
head? It's this--I can tell you so much! It seems to me that I have
been drawn aside out of my old, easy, serene life, into a new sort
of life here--and I am not equal to it. I had got so used, I
suppose, to picking up other lives, that I thought I could do the
same here--and I seem to have taken on more than I could manage. I
forgot, I think, that I was getting older, that I had left youth
behind. I made the mistake of thinking I could play a new role--and
I cannot. I am tired--yes, I am deadly tired; and I feel now as if
I wanted to get out of it all, and just leave things to work
themselves out. I have meddled, and I am being punished for
meddling. I have been playing with fire, and I have been burnt. I
had thought of a new sort of life. Don't you remember," he added
with a smile, "the monkey in Buckland's book, who got into the
kettle on the hob, and whenever he tried to leave it, found it so
cold outside, that he dared not venture out--and he was nearly
boiled alive!"
"No, I DON'T understand," said Maud, with so sudden an air of
sorrow and unhappiness that Howard could hardly refrain from taking
her into his arms like a tired child and comforting her.
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