"Yes," I answered, feeling my throat contract; "I am here now, but I am going home soon."
I was so moved and so confused that I could not think. I had longed for him to come; I could not have borne that he should have been so base as not to come; and yet now that he was here I would have given anything to have him away. He had to come; he had to bear his part of the consequences of wrong, but it was horrible to me for him to be so near that dreadful girl, and it was worse because I pitied her, because she was so helpless, so pathetic, so near even to death.
We stood in the dusk for what seemed to me a long time without further speech. Tom must have found it hard to know what to say at such a time. He looked at me with a sort of wild desperation. Then he cleared his throat, and moistened his lips.
"I have come," he said. "What do you want me to do?"
I could not bear to have him seem to put the responsibility on me.
"I did not send for you," I answered quickly.
He gave me the wan ghost of a smile.
"Do you suppose that I should have come of myself?" he returned. "What shall I do?"
I would not take the burden. The decision must be his.
"You must do what you think right," I said. Then I added, with a queer feeling as if I were thinking aloud, "What you think right to her and to—to the baby."