Wratislaw guessed with a friend's instinct his friend's disquietude, and turned his steps to the hill when he had heard the butler's message. He had known something of Lewis's imaginary self-upbraidings, and he was prepared for them, but he was not prepared for the grey and wretched face in the lee of the pinewood. A sudden suspicion that Lewis had been guilty of some real dishonour flashed across his mind for the moment, only to be driven out with scorn.
"Lewie, my son, what the deuce is wrong with you?" he cried.
The other looked at him with miserable eyes.
"I am beginning to find out my rottenness."
Wratislaw laughed in spite of himself. "What a fool to go making psychological discoveries on such a day! Is it all over the little misfortune at the pool?"
Tragedy grew in Lewis's eyes. "Don't laugh, old chap. You don't know what I did. I let her fall into the water, and then I stood staring and let another man--the other man--save her."
"Well, and what about that? He had a better chance than you. You shouldn't grudge him his good fortune."
"Good Lord, man, you don't think it's that that's troubling me! I felt murderous, but it wasn't on his account."
"Why not?" asked the older man drily. "You love the girl, and he's in the running with you. What more?"
Lewis groaned. "How can I talk about loving her when my love is such a trifling thing that it doesn't nerve me to action? I tell you I love her body and soul. I live for her. The whole world is full of her. She is never a second out of my thoughts. And yet I am so little of a man that I let her come near death and never try to save her."
"But, confound it, man, it may have been mere absence of mind. You were always an extraordinarily plucky chap." Wratislaw spoke irritably, for it seemed to him sheer folly.
Lewis looked at him imploringly. "Can you not understand?" he cried.
Wratislaw did understand, and suddenly. The problem was subtler than he had thought. Weakness was at the core of it, weakness revealed in self-deception and self-accusation alike, the weakness of the finical dreamer, the man with the unrobust conscience. But the weakness which Lewis arraigned himself on was the very obvious failing of the diffident and the irresolute. Wratislaw tried the path of boisterous encouragement.
"Get up, you old fool, and come down to the house. You a coward! You are simply a romancer with an unfortunate knack of tragedy." The man must be laughed out of this folly. If he were not he would show the self-accusing front to the world, and the Manorwaters, Alice, Stocks--all save his chosen intimates--would credit him with a cowardice of which he had no taint.