"But they've had my letters, surely?"
"Not a line since some time after Christmas."
"Do you mean that, Jack? Oh, poor mother! I've written regularly every week. When Julia Wassermann died, her father, who hates the English and hated me because I'm English, turned me out of the house. I should have gone to one of these dreadful concentration camps, if it hadn't been for Rosa. That's why I can't bear the thought of deceiving her; but—I—I don't want to get you into any trouble. We—we can't tell her. We—we mustn't. You can go away, can't you?" and she bit her lip in desperate perplexity and distress.
"I'm going to tell her, Nessa," I said.
"But I don't wish it, Jack. I really don't. I didn't mean all the horrid things I said just now; I—I'm sorry. I've been just distracted."
"Don't worry. Nothing very terrible is likely to come to me; and I quite agree that she ought to know the truth."
She looked at me wonderingly. "How different you are, Jack. What has changed you so? You're so quiet and so—so firm. You don't look the same. Not a bit like you used to be in any way, manner, bearing, everything. I saw it the moment I came into the room."
"You didn't show it. You went for me in much the same old style, you know," I said with a smile. "You always did think me a rotter."
"Do you mean that you've risked coming here merely because of—of what mother told you about me."
"Not very likely, is it?"