Lucy looked at him with a break in the dull misery in her face. Why hadn't he delivered this part of his message first? Why had he talked about snatching away a rope from a drowning man?
'I am very grateful to him,' Lucy said, in a small shaky voice; 'tell him I am very grateful to him. I do not deserve so much love. Ask him to forgive me if he can; I am such a poor thing. I have no courage—I cannot even be generous!'
She broke quite down. She could not trust herself to say any more. She took her lover at his word. Eric Gwatkin gave her one more chance before he went away.
'Remember,' he said, 'it is his last hope of reform.'
But Lucy only moaned, 'I am such a poor thing—I have no courage!'
He went away, and left her weeping in the gallery, under the picture of the Old Master. Surely he would have approved her decision.
It was a dreadful time at St. Benedict's all through that sad week. The boat that was going to do such great things—that was going to make a bump every night of the races—did not row during the three succeeding nights.
Perhaps it was quite as well that it did not; the bumps might not have come off, and, at any rate, it had the credit of them. Most of the crew had gone down; there was nothing to stay up for. All the men, indeed, who were not staying for their degrees, or who had not people up, went down at once. There was nothing to keep them here: the college concert had been put off, and the boat ball, and the supper that was to celebrate the bumps. There was not a single festivity to celebrate; there was nothing but a funeral to stay up for.