‘What ails you? Is it not well that she should love you?’
‘Let me alone,’ I cried; ‘I’ll not answer your questions.’ Why was the fellow to cross-examine me? Ah, there’s the guilty man’s old question; he loves a fine mock indignation, and hugs it to his heart.
Kortes drew back a pace and bowed, as though in apology; but there was no apology in the glance he fixed on me. I would not look him in the face. I drew myself up as tall as I could, and put on my haughtiest air. If he could have seen how small I felt inside!
‘Enough, Kortes,’ said I, with a lordly air. ‘No doubt your intentions are good, but you forget what is becoming from you to me.’
He was not awed; and I think he perceived some of the truth—not all; for he said, ‘You made her love you; that does not happen unless a man’s own acts help it.’
‘Do girls never rush uninvited on love, then?’ I sneered.
‘Some perhaps, but she would not,’ he answered steadily.
He said no more. I nodded to him and set forward on my way. He bowed again slightly, and stood still where he was, watching me. I felt his eyes on me after we had parted. I was in a very tumult of discomfort. The man had humiliated me to the ground. I hoped against hope that he was wrong; and again, in helpless self-contradiction, my heart cried out insisting on its shameful joy because he was right. Right or wrong, wrong or right, what did it matter? Either way now lay misery, either way now lay a struggle that I shrank from and abhorred.
I was somewhat delayed by this interview, and when I arrived at the house I found Mouraki already at breakfast. He apologised for not having awaited my coming, saying, ‘I have transacted much business. Oh, I’ve not been in bed all the time! And I grew hungry. I have been receiving some reports on the state of the island.’
‘It’s quiet enough now. Your arrival has had a most calming effect.’