“I know you are very kind,” said Olive, “but if you please I’d rather you didn’t carry the pail for me.”
She was dreadfully sorry to say anything to hurt his feelings, but she remembered her promise, and she must make him understand here and now that their acquaintance was to cease. She wanted to do it as kindly as she could, but she must do it at once.
Cotterell was not slow to read her thoughts, indeed her distress was too real and undisguised for him to fail to understand.
“Is this an order of dismissal, Mrs. Weston? Am I not to come to see you any more?” he asked abruptly, with a look of pain in his face.
Olive glancing up saw the pain and felt sorrier than ever, but she went bravely forward.
“I am deeply pained, Mr. Cotterell, but I must ask you not to come to see me; my husband does not want you to,” she said, unable in her distress to find any words which would convey her meaning unmistakably, and yet not sound too unkind.
“Your husband has forbidden you to see me?” said Cotterell, biting his yellow moustache savagely.
“Yes,” said Olive simply.
“Your husband’s sentiments would do credit to a dog in the manger, Mrs. Weston, but are not what one exactly looks for from a professing communist, who poses as a shining light for his poor fellow-creatures still groping in the darkness of their ignorance.”
“He says you are a bad man, Mr. Cotterell,” said Olive with a view to defending her husband and perhaps finding out the facts of the case about her mysterious friend, in whose personality she felt a great interest.