"I do. I know—You won't mind my speaking right out, will you?"
"Of course not. Say anything you like."
"Well, I know Miss Maggie Clare."
"Great God!" He sank deeper into his wicker arm-chair, throwing one leg over the other. He seemed to shrink away and to look up at her from under his brows.
The shy serenity of her bearing was undisturbed. "I've got a message to you from her."
He was unable to keep the note of resentment out of his voice. "What?"
"She's very ill. I think she's going to die. She thinks so herself. She wants to know if—if you'd go and see her."
He slipped down deeper into his chair, his chin sunk into his fist. It was quite like the act of cowering. It was long before he spoke. When he did so the tone of resentment was more bitter. "Does she realize what she's done to me?"
"I think she does. In fact, it's the only thing she does realize very clearly now. She talks of it continually, in her dreamy way—but a way that's quite heartbreaking. I really think that if you were to see her—"
He looked up under his lids and brows as she hesitated. "Well?" The tone was as savage as courtesy would let him make it.