"
"You told them a lie, then?"
(Steady. Steady. But it was too late. His only hope lay in her
understanding--her pity.)
"It wasn't a lie. My friends are my business."
"Your friends!" he echoed.
There was silence between them. She was controlled enough not to answer.
It would have been better if she had returned taunt for taunt so that at
last in the white heat of conflict his prison might have melted and let
him free. But there followed a cold, deadly interlude, in which their
antagonism hardened itself with reason and bitterness. He went and stood
by the window looking out on to the dim square. He said at last roughly,
authoritatively:
"Don't go. I don't want you to go."
(If only he could have gone on--driven the words over his set
lips--"because I'm afraid--because I'm at breaking-point--because I can't
do without you. I'm frightened of life. I've been starved in body and
heart too long. I'm frightened because Christine is hard to wake at
night--because I can't work any more.")
"I've got to," she said briefly, sternly.
He walked from the window to the door.
"You don't care. You care more for these two than you do for me. I've
lived hard and clean. I don't lie or steal. I've never thought of any
girl but you. And you put me second to a feckless thief and a----"
She stopped him. Not with a word or gesture, but with the sheer upward
blaze of a chivalrous anger. And it was not only anger.
Pages:
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216