He shut his meaningless book, now intensely disliking the step he had taken, which at the time{290} had seemed so smart a rejoinder. Probably if at this moment Lord Inverbroom had appeared, asking him to cancel it, he would have done so. But that was exactly what it was certain Lord Inverbroom would not do. There remained Norah; he wondered whether Norah would refer to it again. Probably not: he had made clear that he thought the offering of her opinion was a great impertinence. And now to his annoyance he remembered that his wife had also considered it as such. Again she agreed with him, and again the fact of her concurrence made him lose confidence in the justice of his own view. He had instantly acquitted Norah of deliberate impertinence; now he reconsidered whether it had been an impertinence at all.... What if it was the simple desire of a friend to save a friend from a blunder, an unworthiness?
"I remember now," the mechanical voice resumed, with something like a throb in it, "all that old businessbefore we became fixed, you know. But they had to leave it out. It would have made the clock too complicated. Besides, it wasn't necessary, you see. The clock kept you going for ever. The splitting up process went out of fashion, the splitting up of yourself into little bits that grew up like youoffspring, they used to call them."
"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again."In the theatre the singing goes on sometimes while the actors are on the stage, and we got tired of it in a little while. I don't suppose the Japanese get so tired of it, or they would stop having it. Some of them admit that it would be better to have the orchestra in front of the stage, as we do; but others say that so long as the chorus must do so much towards explaining the play, they had better remain where they are. The Japanese seem to like their theatre as it is, and therefore they will not be apt to change in a hurry.Oh, I hope it fitted well, said Alice, diverted for the moment by the mention of this piece of ecclesiastical finery."Don't be moody," she said; "the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull, incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?" She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.
