“Never,” he said indignantly. “Even if it were not a cowardice. It would be more—a confession!”
“Not more than they already know,” she said wearily. “But, I tell you, you MUST go. I have sneaked out of the house and run here all the way to warn you. If you—you care for me, Jack—you will go.”
“I should be a traitor to you if I did,” he said quickly. “I shall stay.”
“But if—if—Jack—if”—she drew nearer him with a new-found timidity, and then suddenly placed her two hands upon his shoulders: “If—if—Jack—I were to go with you?”
The old rapt, eager look of possession had come back to her face now; her lips were softly parted. Yet even then she seemed to be waiting some reply more potent than that syllabled on the lips of the man before her.
Howbeit that was the only response. “Darling,” he said kissing her, “but wouldn't that justify them”—
“Stop,” she said suddenly. Then putting her hand over his mouth, she continued with the same half-weary expression: “Don't let us go over all that again either. It is SO tiresome. Listen, dear. You'll do one or two little things for me—won't you, dandy boy? Don't linger long at the school-house after lessons. Go right home! Don't look after these men TO-DAY—to-morrow, Saturday, is your holiday—you know—and you'll have more time. Keep to yourself to-day as much as you can, dear, for twelve hours—until—until—you hear from me, you know. It will be all right then,” she added, lifting her eyelids with a sudden odd resemblance to her father's look of drowsy pain, which Ford had never noticed before. “Promise me that, dear, won't you?”
With a mental reservation he promised hurriedly—preoccupied in his wonder why she seemed to avoid his explanation, in his desire to know what had happened, in the pride that had kept him from asking more or volunteering a defence, and in his still haunting sense of having been wronged. Yet he could not help saying as he caught and held her hand:—
“YOU have not doubted me, Cressy? YOU have not allowed this infamous raking up of things that are past and gone to alter your feelings?”
She looked at him abstractedly. “You think it might alter ANYBODY'S feelings, then?”