And yet that failure doesn't affect the quality
of her love. Is it something that shines through the poor tattered
fabric? Anyhow, it has nothing to do with her brain. It is she herself,
somehow, not anything of hers, that wants me. And you ask if I can stand
it?"
Michael with his ugly face and his kind eyes and his simple heart seemed
extraordinarily charming just then to Aunt Barbara. She wished that
Sylvia could have seen him then in all the unconsciousness of what he
was doing so unquestioningly, or that she could have seen him as she
had with his mother during the last hour. Lady Ashbridge had insisted
on sitting close to him, and holding his hand whenever she could possess
herself of it, of plying him with a hundred repeated questions, and
never once had she made Michael either ridiculous or self-conscious. And
this, she reflected, went on most of the day, and for how many days it
would go on, none knew. Yet Michael could not consider even whether he
could stand it; he rejected the expression as meaningless.
"And your friends?" she said. "Do you manage to see them?"
"Oh, yes, occasionally," said Michael. "They don't come here, for the
presence of strangers makes my mother agitated.
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