“Why, dearest?” Maurice tipped some perfume on the handkerchief.
“It can only be more pain and more bitterness for her if we don’t. What can I mean to her? What can you mean to her? And I have broken with her. Oh, Maurice, surely you see that it must be.”
He turned to her now, and saw that tears were running down her cheeks.
Caution left him. “Dearest!” he exclaimed, his arms about her in a moment, “rather than hurt you I would walk over ten thousand Angelas. Dearest, don’t cry; I will do my best. I’ll try and dissuade your father—an ugly task for me. Poor Angela was my friend.”
“Oh, Maurice, say that I do not come between you and anything real.”
Hiding her face on his shoulder, it comforted her to think herself weak, and he, with his larger, kinder comprehension, strong.
“You are the only real thing,” Maurice answered. He felt that he forced her to imply herself wilful in wrongness; and his fear lest she were more right than she guessed made his triumph seem dangerous.
Felicia said that she would not come in to dinner, and Maurice walked slowly to the drawing-room, pausing for a moment over his thoughts in the little hall. Felicia’s parting kiss had quieted his worst fear—the fear lest her love suspected past wrongs in him, a baseless fear he now saw, and with this steadying of the nerves he could see the other fear as baseless too. Angela would never turn despicably on him; besides, even if she did, Felicia would never believe her, her jealousy would piteously interpret her desperation. There was further relief in thinking Felicia unjust. The thing must be patched up, and Felicia brought to see that common fairness demanded a certain toleration of Angela.
Mr. Merrick was reading a paper with a pretence at absorption, and Maurice guessed that he was very angry. Neither commented on Felicia’s absence, and they went in silence into the little dining-room.