“Because we weren’t in till about eleven?” said Siegmund, also with sarcasm.
“I mustn’t do it again. Oh no, I mustn’t do it again, really.”
“For fear of alarming the old lady?” he asked.
“ ‘You know, dear, it troubles me a good deal… but if I were your mother, I don’t know how I should feel,’ ” she quoted.
“When one engages rooms one doesn’t usually stipulate for a step-mother to nourish one’s conscience,” said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed within himself with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth were on edge.
“I don’t mind in the least,” she said. “The poor old woman has her opinions, and I mine.”
Siegmund brooded a little.
“I know I’m a moral coward,” he said bitterly.
“Nonsense!” she replied. Then, with a little heat: “But you do continue to try so hard to justify yourself, as if you felt you needed justification.”
He laughed bitterly.
“I tell you—a little thing like this—it remains tied tight round something inside me, reminding me for hours—well, what everybody else’s opinion of me is.”
Helena laughed rather plaintively.
“I thought you were so sure we were right,” she said.
He winced again.
“In myself I am. But in the eyes of the world——”
“If you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?” she said brutally.
He hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette ring.
“What is myself?” he asked.
