Making her nod suffice for a good-night, Letty, with the red volume of Hans Andersen under her arm, passed out into the hall. It was not easy to carry herself with the necessary nonchalance, but she got strength by saying inwardly: “Here’s where I begin to walk on blades.” The knowledge that she was doing it, and that she was doing it toward an end, gave her a dignity of carriage which Allerton watched with sharpened observation.
Reaching the little back spare room she found the door open, and Steptoe sweeping up the hearth before a newly lighted fire. Beppo, whose basket had been established here, jumped from his shelter to paw up at her caressingly. With the hearth-brush in his hand Steptoe raised himself to say:
“Madam’ll excuse me, but I thought as the evenin’ was chilly––”
“He doesn’t want me to stay.”
She brought out the fact abruptly, lifelessly, because she couldn’t keep it back. The calm she had been able to maintain downstairs was breaking up, with a quivering of the lip and two rolling tears.
Slowly and absently Steptoe dusted his left hand with the hearth-brush held in his right. “If madam’s goin’ to decide ’er life by what another person wants she ain’t never goin’ to get nowhere.”
There were tears now in the voice. “Yes, but when it’s—him.”
“’Im or anybody else, we all ’ave to fight for what we means to myke of our own life. It’s a poor gyme in which I don’t plye my ’and for all I think it’ll win.”
“Do you mean that I should—act independent?”