“Perior—she has broken our engagement! She accepted me yesterday—and to-day she has broken our engagement!” and the quick change of expression on Perior’s face moving him too much, he dropped into a chair, and leaning his arms on the table, bowed his head upon his hands.
Perior’s first feeling was a crumbling sense of baseness. The lie between him and his unfortunate friend scorched him, and his recognition of Camelia’s courage was swept away by the realization of her cruelty, by the avenging consciousness that owing to her he feared to meet his friend’s eyes.
He kept silent, studying the surrendered reticence of the bent head.
“She accepted me yesterday, Perior.” Henge repeated it helplessly.
Perior put his hand on his shoulder. “My dear Henge,” he said.
Arthur looked up. “I don’t know why I should come to you with it. I am broken. I could cry like a baby. I love that child, Perior! You saw her yesterday; yes, that is why I came. She accepted me yesterday, you know. Did she say anything to you about it?—when you saw her? You see”—he smiled miserably—“I want you to turn the knife in my wound.”
“I heard it,” said Perior, feeling that a rigid adherence to perhaps deceptive truth was all that was left to him.
“But she gave you no reason to think that she had changed her mind?”
“What has Camelia said to you, Arthur? One may interpret it differently,” said Perior, detesting himself.
Sir Arthur’s face resumed the blankness of its helpless wonder.