"Don't you like me to come, Robin?" she asked.
"No," he said slowly. "That wasn't why I spoke—but I don't think I do."
"Why?" she persisted.
Hollister stirred uneasily.
"Call a spade a spade, Robin," she advised. "Say what you think—what you mean."
"That's difficult," he muttered. "How can any one say what he means when he is not quite sure what he does mean? I'm in trouble. You're sorry for me, in a way. And maybe you feel—because of old times, because of the contrast between what your life was then and what it is now—you feel as if you would like to comfort me. And I don't want you to feel that way. I look at you—and I think about what you said. I wonder if you meant it? Do you remember what you said?"
"Quite clearly. I meant it, Robin. I still mean it. I'm yours—if you need me. Perhaps you won't. Perhaps you will. Does it trouble you to have me a self-appointed anchor to windward?"
She clasped her hands over her knees, bending forward a little, looking at him with a curious serenity. Her eyes did not waver from his.
Hollister made no answer.
"I brought a lot of this on you, Robin," she went on in the musical, rippling voice so like Doris in certain tones and inflections as to make him wonder idly if he had unconsciously fallen in love with Doris Cleveland's voice because it was like Myra's. "If I had stuck it out in London till you came back, maimed or otherwise, things would have been different. But we were started off, flung off, one might say, into different orbits by the forces of the war itself. That's neither here nor there, now. You may think I'm offering myself as a sort of vicarious atonement—if your Doris fails you—but I'm not, really. I'm too selfish. I have never sacrificed myself for any man. I never will. It isn't in me. I'm just as eager to get all I can out of life as I ever was. I liked you long ago. I like you still. That's all there is to it, Robin."