"Oh," she replied indifferently, "I don't know. What do you want me to think?"
"Poker face! There's nothing to be got out of you, is there?" he said, smiling. "I see I'll have to tell you—and yet I feel such a beast to say anything about it. Besides, there's a bit I can't tell; it wouldn't be decent."
Esther interposed quickly:
"There's no reason why you should say anything. Please don't, if you'd rather not."
"But I'd like to; I couldn't let you get wrong ideas."
He halted again, frowning at the lighted end of his cigarette.
"Oh, well, it was like this. About a week ago I had a sort of a brush-up with Thérèse. She was very angry and so was I, and I laid down the law to her a bit. Since then we've scarcely spoken…. I don't believe I had said a word to her until I found her in my room, early this afternoon. Well, this evening I was on my way to dress, and when I passed the sitting-room she was in the doorway. She asked me to come inside, said she wanted to explain something to me."
"Oh! So that was it?"
"She was extraordinarily nice, appealing, and all that. She admitted it was a stupid lie about coming to get a book, that she had tapped on the door and thought she heard me say 'Come in.' Then when she was inside she found out she was mistaken, and was about to go out again, when I appeared, and frightened the life out of her by the suspicious look on my face, so she just said the first thing that came into her head. She made me feel rather a brute. She said, 'You know you always terrify me, Roger, you are so hard, so intolerant. You always think the worst of me.' I have to admit that's true. I may not have given her a chance."
She waited for him to go on. He continued to frown, not looking at her, plainly troubled in his mind.