human
Shall we talk? Shall I play to you? Shall I draw you a picture? What shall we do, Jack?
gpt
Well, Phil, I think--perhaps--we had better talk.
human
What has happened, Jack? You do not look happy.
gpt
Nothing, Phil--nothing but what I might have expected.
human
Tell me, Jack.
gpt
Jack, what _is_ the good of being friends if you won't tell me what makes you unhappy?
human
I don't know how to tell you, Phil. I don't see a way to begin.
gpt
Sit down, and begin somehow. She placed him comfortably in the largest chair in the room, and then she stood in front of him, and looked in his face with compassionate eyes. The sight of those deep-brown orbs, so full of light and pity, smote her lover with a kind of madness.
human
What is it makes people unhappy? Are you ill?
gpt
No, Phil; I am never ill. You see, I am not exactly unhappy----
human
But Jack, you look so dismal.
gpt
Yes, that is it; I am a little dismal. No. Phil--no. I am really unhappy, and you are the cause.
human
I the cause? But, Jack, why?
gpt
I had a talk with your guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun, yesterday. It was all about you. And he wants me--not to come here so often, in fact. And I musn't come.
human
But why not? What does Lawrence mean?
gpt
That is just what I cannot explain to you. You must try to forgive me.
human
Forgive you, Jack?
gpt
You see, Phil, I have behaved badly from the beginning. I ought not to have called upon you as I did in Carnarvon Square; I ought not to have let you call me Jack, nor should I have called you Phil. It is altogether improper in the eyes of the world.
human
Perhaps I have known, Jack, that it was a little unusual. Other girls haven't got a Jack Dunquerque, have they? Poor things! That is all you mean, isn't it, Jack?
gpt
Phil, don't look at me like that! You don't know--you can't understand--No; it is more than unusual; it is quite wrong.
human
I have done nothing wrong, the girl said proudly.
gpt
If I had, my conscience would make me unhappy. But I do begin to understand what you mean. Last week Agatha asked me if I was not thinking too much about you. And the curate made me laugh because he said, quite by himself in a corner, you know, that Mr. Dunquerque was a happy man; and when I asked him, why he turned very red, and said it was because I had given to him what all the world would long to have. He meant, Jack----
human
I wish he was here, Jack cried hotly,
gpt
And one day Laura Herries----
human
That's the girl who said you were _farouche_, Phil. Go on.
gpt
Was talking to Agatha about some young lady who had got compromised by a gentleman's attentions. I asked why, and she replied quite sharply that if I did not know, no one could know. Then she got up and went away. Agatha was angry about it, I could see; but she only said something about understanding when I come out.
human
Miss Herries ought to have her neck wrung, too, as well as the curate,
gpt
Compromise--improper. Phil beat her little foot on the floor.
human
What does it all mean? Jack, tell me--what is this wrong thing that you and I have done?
gpt
Not you, Phil; a thousand times not you.
human
Then I do not care much what other people say, she replied simply.
gpt
Do you know, Jack, it seems to me as if we never ought to care for what people, besides people we love, say about us.
human
But it is I who have done wrong,
gpt
Have you, Jack? Oh, then I forgive you. I think I know you. You should have come to me with an unreal smile on your face, and pretended the greatest deference to my opinion, even when you knew it wasn't worth having. That is what the curate does to young ladies. I saw him yesterday taking Miss Herries's opinion on Holman Hunt's picture. She said it was 'sweetly pretty.' He said, 'Do you really think so?' in such a solemn voice, as if he wasn't quite sure that the phrase summed up the whole picture, but was going to think it over quietly. Don't laugh, Jack, because I cannot read like other people, and all I have to go by is what Mr. Dyson told me, and Agatha tells me, and what I see--and--and what you tell me, Jack, which is worth all the rest to me.
human
And I forgive you, Jack, all the more because you did not treat me as you would have treated the girls who seem to me so lifeless and languid, and--Jack, it may be wrong to say it, but Oh, so small! What compliment could you have paid me better than to single me out for your friend--you who have seen so much and done so much--my friend--mine? We were friends from the first, were we not? And I have never since hidden anything from you, Jack, and never will.