They were at dinner. How nice Henry looked in his evening clothes; she
liked his lean brown hands, and the gesture with which he smoothed back
his hair. She smiled fondly as she thought how attractive all women must
find Henry. Life on a ranch had not coarsened him; far from it. He was
sensitive and masculine both, an ideal combination.
“Dear Henry!” she murmured.
He leant over and patted her hand, but there was an absent look in his
eyes, and his manner was slightly more perfunctory than it had been at
luncheon. Anyone but Mrs. Martin would have suspected that he could
assume that manner at will—had, in fact, assumed it often, towards many
women who had misinterpreted it, and whom he had forgotten as soon as
they were out of sight. They had reproached him sometimes; there was a
fair echo of reproaches in Henry’s life. He had always felt aggrieved
when they reproached him; couldn’t they understand that he was
kind-hearted really? that he only wanted to please? To make life
agreeable? He hated saying anything disagreeable to anybody, but greatly
preferred enrolling them among the victims of his charm—which he could
turn on, at a moment’s notice, like turning on a tap—and if they
misunderstood him, he did not consider that he had been to blame. Not
that he remained to argue the matter out. It was far easier, in most
cases, simply to go right away instead, without giving any explanation,
right away to where the clamour that was sure to arise would not reach
his ears at all. And sometimes, when he had not managed so skilfully as
usual, and things had been, briefly, tiresome, he would criticize
himself to the extent of thinking that he was a damned fool to have,
incorrigibly, so little foresight of where the easy path was leading
him.
Yet he was not quite right about this, for he was perfectly well able to
recognize the progress of his own drifting; but he recognized it as
though it applied to some other person, in whose affairs he was himself
unable to interfere. He watched himself as he might have watched another
man, thinking meanwhile, with an amused contempt and a certain
compassion, “How the dickens is he going to get himself out of this?”