Now that he actually saw her before him, it was neither love nor hate that he felt, but an undefinable and overmastering emotion that seemed to petrify him, so that he stood there quite silent with his hand on the switch.
“Well,” she went on, “aren’t you surprised to see me?”
He bent his head.
“Can you guess why I have come?”
He shook his head.
She looked a little distressed at this. “Then perhaps I’ve made a mistake in coming.”
At this he spoke for the first time. “I should say that the chances were that you had,” he said, and his tone was not agreeable.
The edge of his words seemed to give her back all her confidence. “Now, how strange that you should not know why I’m here! I’ve come, of course, to return your pearls.” He saw now, between the laces of her summer dress that she was wearing them. “In common honesty I could hardly keep them.” She put up her hands to the clasp, but it did not yield at once to her touch, and she looked up at him. “I think you’ll have to undo it for me,” she murmured, with bent head.
“I don’t want them,” he answered, with temper. “I never want to see them again.”
“Nor me, either, perhaps?”