Clara rose, as it impelled by mental anguish; she
stretched out her band to the mantel-piece, and so stood, between
him and the light, her admirable figure designed on a glimmering
background.
'I know why you say nothing,' she continued, abruptly but without
resentment. 'You cannot use words of sympathy which would be
anything but formal, and you prefer to let me understand that. It is
like you. Oh, you mustn't think I mean the phrase as a reproach.
Anything but that. I mean that you were always honest, and time
hasn't changed you--in that.' A slight, very slight, tremor on the
close. 'I'd rather you behaved to me like your old self. A sham
sympathy would drive me mad.'
'I said nothing,' he replied, 'only because words seemed
meaningless.'
'Not only that. You feel for me, I know, because you are not
heartless; but at the same time you obey your reason, which tells
you that all I suffer comes of my own self-will.'
'I should like you to think better of me than that. I'm not one of
those people, I hope, who use every accident to point a moral, and
begin by inventing the moral to suit their own convictions. I know
all the details of your misfortune.
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