“Oh!” For a time Anthony said no more. His clasp of her hand relaxed. Very quietly he returned to her the possession of it. “I see,” he said at last. “You are giving me the chuck, are you not?”
The girl looked at him with frightened, miserable eyes.
“Tony, I can't help it.”
“Naturally you can't,” Tony assented moodily. “You couldn't be expected to. I never was anything but a wretched match at the best of times—even with the money Uncle Luke left me—but now, now that every damned rag of a paper in the country is saying out as plainly as they dare that I am a murderer, it settles the matter, of course.”
Cecily interrupted him with a little cry.
“Tony! You know it isn't that!”
A gleam of hope brightened Anthony Collyer's eyes.
“Not that? Is it just that you are sick of me then? Heaven knows I wouldn't blame you for that. I was always a dull sort of chap. But I love you, Cecily.”
The girl's big tragic eyes looked at his bent head with a sudden wave of tenderness in their brown depths. “And I love you, Tony,” she said beneath her breath. “But that does not matter.”
“Doesn't it?” A sudden fire leaped into Anthony's deep-set eyes. “Why, that is just the one thing that matters—the only thing that does matter. If you love me, I shall never go out of your life, Cecily.”