Then at last he took his arm from that gate and followed me through it, shutting it behind him.
"Perhaps there were people who were hard to leave in London?"
What right had he to say it? I was angry with him. Considering he had his own love-story to attend to, why should he question me still—try to find out how love had treated me? What business was it of his?
Temper flamed up in me.
"No! When I left town to join up there was nobody I minded leaving. Else I should not have left. The—the people I should have hated to leave had left themselves!"
My voice grew harder as the memory of Harry Markham surged back into my mind. Black eyes, red tabs, soft caressing voice that promised "all things to all women," tender ways—how I had adored him. And how completely that adoration had died away now!
Oh, the unexpected things that happen in life; nearly always in our own selves! But I didn't intend to give any of that away to this other young man who stood beside me, quietly attentive to what I was saying, outside that closed green door.
I put out my hand; but his was on the latch before me. He held it there as if he were just going to open it for me.
"Oh! So 'they' had left." He took up, in his quiet steady voice.
"Yes," I said defiantly. "If you must know, and it seems as if you always must know everything about everybody——"