She looked up at him. All her shyness seemed suddenly gone. Her eyes met his fearlessly. Yet her voice was very low as she said: "I think that you love mama."
Of course she would think that. If she had ever doubted it his question uttered a minute ago on their remeeting must have convinced her.
He took a backward step and drew in his breath. Upstairs Nina was dying perhaps. On every hand fortune seemed bent on breaking with him. He was lashed, stung, crumpled. He looked at her and truth cowered naked.
"Not at all," he said with biting emphasis. "Perhaps people talk that and you believe it. But I've never thought of such a thing. I have offered myself to Mrs. Darling, and I've given her your ring."
He paused, expectant; but Rosamond just stared at him.
Then he walked out of the room, hurt and—rather frightened.
It had been one of those fearfully ingenious tricks of Fate which she deals out in such a startlingly unexpected manner—this meeting with his whilom fiancée.
Chasing the woman who had the power to make him forget, only to be abruptly thrust, in the very midst of it, under the same roof with her he was striving never to remember, was malevolent cruelty. And it was very awful.
Yes, it would have been much better had he slept five minutes longer. Then there would have been no escape, and his troubles would have been over.