“Good heavens! Violet—darling—what is it? Why are you unhappy?”
The tone was enough. The old tremor of passion struggling to repress itself. Had she forged this weapon deliberately, Violet must have rejoiced over its success. But this time the outburst was genuine.
“Oh, I sometimes wish I could die!” she answered, as soon as she could control her voice. “Then there would be a peaceful ending to it all, at any rate.”
“Ending to what? You have been very much shaken, dear—since that unfortunate skirmish the other night. But you must try and forget that and become your own bright self again. It cannot be that you have any real trouble on your mind?”
“Oh, Renshaw—you have been so hard to me of late—so cold and silent, as if you didn’t care so much as to speak to me—and I have felt it so—so much. Ah, but you don’t believe me.”
The man’s face grew white. What did this mean? Had he been deceiving himself all this time? While he had thought she was trying once more to whistle him back to her lure, to amuse herself with him and his most sacred feelings as a mere pastime during the other’s absence—could it be after all that she had merely been playing off the other against him—piqued at the outward cooling of his attentions? A tumultuous rush of feeling went through his heart and brain. But like a douche of cold water upon the fainting patient came her next words, bringing him to with a kind of mental gasp.
“You have felt it so much?” he echoed, quickly.
“Yes. I could not bear the thought of losing such a staunch, true-hearted friend as you would be—as you are. You don’t know how I value the idea of your sympathy.”
Crash went the newly born resuscitation of his hopes—scattered to fragments—shivered into empty nothingness by just one word. “Friend!” Hateful word in such conjunction! His voice seemed numbed and strained as he rejoined—
“I am sorry you should think of regarding me as anything less than a friend—and you must know that you could never lack my sympathy. Then there is something troubling you?”