There was a pause.
“Oh! I’m a liar, am I? Thanks. I lied enough to get you, I’ll admit. But you never complained of that. I remember be-ginning the New Year well with a thumping lie just to have a sight of you, my vixen. But you didn’t complain then. I took you with only the clothes on your back. And I’ve spent every cent I had on you. And now I’m spun, you call me a liar.”
She said nothing.
“However,” he went on, “this is going to come to an end, this is!”
He rose, changed the position of the candle, putting it on a chest of drawers, and then drew his trunk from the wall, and knelt in front of it.
She gathered that he was packing his clothes. At first she did not comprehend his reference to beginning the New Year. Then his meaning revealed itself. That story to her mother about having been attacked by ruffians at the bottom of King Street had been an invention, a ruse to account plausibly for his presence on her mother’s doorstep! And she had never suspected that the story was not true. In spite of her experience of his lying, she had never suspected that that particular statement was a lie. What a simpleton she was!
There was a continual movement in the room for about a quarter of an hour. Then a key turned in the lock of the trunk.
His head popped up over the foot of the bed. “This isn’t a joke, you know,” he said.
She kept silence.
“I give you one more chance. Will you write to your mother—or Constance if you like—or won’t you?”