"I didn't lie. You know I didn't lie."
He shrugged his shoulders wearily and relapsed into silence. Silence there was till, a minute or two later, it was broken by a little sob from Mina Zabriska. He turned his head toward her; then he took hold of her arm and twisted her face round to him. The tears were running down her cheeks.
"I'm so, so sorry," she murmured. "I didn't mean to; and I did it! And now—now I can't stop it. You needn't believe me if you don't like, but I'm—I'm miserable and—and frightened."
He flung his cigar into the water and put his hands in his pockets. So he stood watching her, his body swaying a little to and fro; his eyes were suspicious of her, yet they seemed amused also, and they were not cruel; it was not such a look as he had given her when they parted by the Pool.
"If it were true?" she asked. "I mean, couldn't Lady Tristram somehow——?"
"If what was true? Oh, the nonsense you told Duplay?" He laughed. "If it was true, I should be a nobody and nobody's son. I suppose that would amuse you very much, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have come to Merrion for nothing then! But as it isn't true, what's the use of talking?"
He won no belief from her when he said that it was not true; to her quick mind the concentrated bitterness with which he described what it would mean to him showed that he believed it and that the thought was no new one; in imagination he had heard the world calling him many times what he now
called himself—if the thing were true. She drew her cloak round her and shivered.
"Cold?" he asked.
"No. Wretched, wretched."