Was there not a touch of natural pathos in this?  He hoped so; then mocked at himself for calculating such effects.

’I think you don’t care much for ordinary social pleasures, Mr Peak?’

He smiled bitterly.

’I have never known much of them,—­and you remember that I look forward to a life in which they will have little part.  Such a life,’ he continued, after a pause, ’seems to you unendurably dull?  I noticed that, when I spoke of it before.’

‘You misunderstood me.’  She said it so undecidedly that he gazed at her with puzzled look.  Her eyes fell.

‘But you like society?’

‘If you use the word in its narrowest meaning,’ she answered, ’then I not only dislike society, but despise it.’

She had raised her eyebrows, and was looking coldly at him.  Did she mean to rebuke him for the tone he had adopted?  Indeed, he seemed to himself presumptuous.  But if they were still on terms such as these, was it not better to know it, even at the cost of humiliation?  One moment he believed that he could read Sidwell’s thoughts, and that they were wholly favourable to him; at another he felt absolutely ignorant of all that was passing in her, and disposed to interpret her face as that of a conventional woman who had never regarded him as on her own social plane.  These uncertainties, these frequent reversions to a state of mind which at other times he seemed to have long outgrown, were a singular feature of his relations with Sidwell.  Could such experiences consist with genuine love?  Never had he felt more willing to answer the question with a negative.  He felt that he was come here to act a part, and that the end of the interview, be it what it might, would only affect him superficially.

‘No,’ he replied, with deliberation; ’I never supposed that you had any interest in the most foolish class of wealthy people.  I meant that you recognise your place in a certain social rank, and regard intercourse with your equals as an essential of happiness.’

’If I understood why you ask’—­she began abruptly, but ceased as she met his glance.  Again he thought she was asserting a distant dignity.

’The question arose naturally out of a train of thought which always occupies me when I talk with you.  I myself belong to no class whatever, and I can’t help wondering how—­if the subject ever occurred to you—­you would place me.’

He saw his way now, and, having said thus much, could talk on defiantly.  This hour must decide his fortune with Sidwell, yet his tongue utterly refused any of the modes of speech which the situation would have suggested to an ordinary mind.  He could not ‘make love’.  Instead of humility, he was prompted to display a rough arrogance; instead of tender phrases, he uttered what sounded like deliberate rudeness.  His voice was less gently tuned than Sidwell had been wont to hear it.  It all meant that he despaired of wooing successfully, and more than half wished to force some word from Sidwell which would spare him the necessity of a plain avowal.