"I tore it."
"I see." He laid the glove upon the table. "And the other glove--the one you wore that night--the one I tore upon the balcony over St. James's Park? It was you I met that night in London? Or wasn't it?"
The question was put without any sarcasm, but with the same dull curiosity which had marked his other questions, and on her side she answered it simply as she had answered the others. "Yes, it was I whom you met, and the glove you speak of was thrown away."
It seemed that he had come to the end of his questions, for he sat for a little, drumming with his fingers on the table. Once he looked up and towards the window, as though his very eyes needed the relief of the wide expanse of valley.
"Now will you go? Please," said Miranda, gently, and the next moment regretted that she had spoken.
"Oh, yes, I will go," he answered. "I will go back to Algeciras, and from Algeciras to England." He was not looking at her, and so noticed nothing of the spasm of pain which for a second convulsed her face at his literal acceptation of her prayer. "But before I go, tell me;" and the questions began again.
"You say you need no one?"
"No one."
"Then why did you cry out a minute ago, 'It's the friend I want, not the lover'? You were not amusing yourself then. Why, too, did you--this afternoon in the garden, perhaps you remember--when the flowers fell on to the ground between us? Neither were you amusing yourself then."
Miranda drew the glove away from where it lay in front of him; absently she began to slip it over her hand, and then becoming aware of what she did, and of certain associations with that action at this moment, she hurriedly stripped it off.