"I didn't look you up, because I didn't think you wanted much
to see me"--he explained with a certain awkwardness--"but
bye-gones are all bye-gones. We took a town house,
but we didn't like it. It was one endless procession
of stupid and tiresome calls and dinners and parties;
we got awfully sick of it, and swore we wouldn't try
it again. Well there you are, don't you see? It's stupid
in Hertfordshire, and it's stupid here. Of course one can
travel abroad, but that's no good for more than a few months.
Of course it would be different if I had something to do.
I tell you God's truth, Lou--sometimes I feel as if I
was really happier when I was a poor man. I know it's all
rot--I really wasn't--but sometimes it SEEMS as if I was."
She contemplated him with a leaden kind of gaze.
"Didn't it ever occur to you to do some good with your money?"
she said, with slow bluntness. Then, as if fearing a
possible misconception, she added more rapidly: " I don't
mean among your own family. We're a clannish people,
we Thorpes; we'd always help our own flesh and blood,
even if we kicked them while we were doing it--but I
mean outside, in the world at large."
"What have I got to do with the world at large? I didn't
make it; I'm not responsible for it." He muttered the
phrases lightly enough, but a certain fatuity in them
seemed to attract his attention when he heard their sound.
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