You're all right, only you
don't understand. You don't understand the sort of person I am.
I am twenty-four years old, I have worked for my own living up
here in London since I was twelve. I was a man, so far as work
and independence went, at fifteen. Since then I have had my
shoulder to the wheel; I have lived on nothing; I have made a
little money where it didn't seem possible. I have worried my
way into posts which it seemed that no one could think of giving
me, but all the time I have lived in a little corner of the world
--like that."
His finger suddenly described a circle in the air.
"You don't understand--you can't," he went on, "but there it is.
I never spoke to a woman until I spoke to Beatrice. Chance made
me her friend. I began to understand the outside of some of
those things which I had never even dreamed of before. She set
me right in many ways. I began to read, think, absorb little
bits of the real world. It was all wonderful. Then Elizabeth
came. I met her, too, by accident--she came to my office for a
house--Elizabeth!"
Pritchard found something almost pathetic in the sudden dropping
of Tavernake's voice, the softening of his face.
"I don't know how to talk about these things," Tavernake said,
simply. "There's a literature that's reached from before the
Bible to now, full of nothing else. It's all as old as the
hills. I suppose I am about the only sane man in this city who
knew nothing of it; but I did know nothing of it, and she was the
first woman.
Pages:
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281