Again she looked up; there was no surprise, no resentment in her face, only a heart-breaking plaintiveness. “Oh, why couldn’t you be honest with me?” she moaned. But she stopped sobbing and sat straight on the sofa again. “You’ll think me still more of a fool for doing this,” she said.
Was the abuse never coming? Mr Byers began to long for it. If he were abused enough, he thought that he might be able to find something to say for himself.
“You think that because—because I live as I do, I know the world and—and so on. I don’t a bit. It doesn’t follow really, you know. Fancy my thinking I could do anything for Julian! What do I know of business? Well, you’ve told me now!”
“If it had been for you I’d have risked it and gone ahead,” said Byers again.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” she murmured vaguely. Byers did not try to describe to her the odd strong impulse which had inspired his speech. “I must go and tell the Prince about it,” she said.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded.
“Do? What is there to do? Nothing, I suppose. What can we do?”
“I wish to God I’d—I’d met a woman like you. Shall you marry him now?”
She looked up; a faint smile appeared on her face.
“Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now; and he’ll like it. Yes, I’ll marry him now.”