“Would it,” he asked quickly, “have made any difference — about Lionel, I mean?”
She shook her head.
“Not,” she said, “about Lionel.”
He bent lower over the pattern in the snow; it had become more intricate.
“I couldn’t tell you,” he muttered; “I tried. I couldn’t. That was why I went off. You say too late. D’you mind telling me if you mean — you care?”
Her silence seemed interminable, and then he knew she had already answered him. It seemed to him that if he sat there and died, he couldn’t speak.
“Winn,” she asked in a whisper, “did you go because of me — or because of you?”
He turned round, facing her.
“Is that worrying you?” he asked fiercely. “Well, you can see for yourself, can’t you? All there is of me — ” He could not finish his sentence.
It was snowing heavily. They seemed intensely, cruelly alone. It was as if all life crept off and left them by themselves in the drifting gray snow, in their silent little corner of the unconscious, unalterable world.