Don't you LIKE your brother as he is," he went on, "and haven't
you given your mother an intelligible account of all that that
comes to?"
It put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things, this
at least would have been the case hadn't his final challenge
directly helped her. Everything, at the stage they had reached,
directly helped her, because everything betrayed in him such a
basis of intention. He saw--the odd way things came out!--that he
would have been held less monstrous had he only been a little
wilder. What exposed him was just his poor old trick of quiet
inwardness, what exposed him was his THINKING such offence. He hadn't
in the least however the desire to irritate that Sarah imputed to him,
and he could only at last temporise, for the moment, with her
indignant view. She was altogether more inflamed than he had
expected, and he would probably understand this better when he
should learn what had occurred for her with Chad. Till then her
view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise at his not
clutching the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant. "I
leave you to flatter yourself," she returned, "that what you speak
of is what YOU'VE beautifully done. When a thing has been already
described in such a lovely way--!" But she caught herself up, and
her comment on his description rang out sufficiently loud.
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