"
"That's just what I do," she cried eagerly and almost angrily.
Marchmont's words had brought back what Quisante could be; surely a man's
best must be what he really and truly is? Then his true self shows itself
untrammelled; the measure of it is rather the heights to which it can
rise than the level on which it moves at ordinary times. She remembered
Quisante on Duty Hill. "That's what I do, and you--you and all of
them--don't. You fix on his small faults, faults of manner--oh, yes, and
of breeding too, I daresay, perhaps of feeling too. But to see a man's
faults is not to see the man." She rose to her feet and faced him. "I see
him more truly than you do," she said proudly and defiantly. Then her
face grew suddenly soft, and she caught his hand. "My dear friend, my
dear, dear friend," she murmured, "don't be unkind to me. I'm not happy
about it; how can I be happy about it? Don't make it worse for me; I'm
trying to see the truth, and you might help me; but you only tell me what
leaves out more than half the truth."
He would not or could not respond to her gentleness; his evil spirit
possessed him; he gave expression to his anger with her and his scorn of
his rival, not to his own love and his own tenderness.
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