"
Aynesworth helped himself to a liqueur. He felt that he needed it.
"One weakness alone distresses me," Wingrave continued. "In all
ordinary matters of sentiment I am simply a negation. There is one
antipathy, however, which I find it hard to overcome. The very sight
of a woman, or the sound of her voice, distresses me. This is the more
unfortunate," he continued, "because it is upon the shoulders of her
sex that the greater portion of my debt to my fellow creatures rests.
However, time may help me!"
Aynesworth leaned back in his chair, and contemplated his companion
for the next few moments in thoughtful silence. It was hard, he felt,
to take a man who talked like this seriously. His manner was
convincing, his speech deliberate and assured. There was not the
slightest doubt but that he meant what he said, yet it seemed to
Aynesworth equally certain that the time would come, and come quickly,
when the unnatural hardness of the man would yield to the genial
influence of friendship, of pleasure, of the subtle joys of freedom.
Those past days of hideous monotony, of profitless, debasing toil, the
long, sleepless nights, the very nightmare of life to a man of
Wingrave's culture and habits, might well have poisoned his soul, have
filled him with ideas such as these. But everything was different now!
The history of the world could show no epoch when pleasures so many
and various were there for the man who carries the golden key.
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