She had deceived herself for the first time and the last. Of course it was painful—the awakening. Waking up to the perception of unvarnished facts generally is unpleasant. But she could look at her own foolishness without wincing, indulgently—her foolishness of a week ago. Just an error of judgment that there was no scrap of likelihood of her repeating.
Still—she admitted it to herself—he was undeniably attractive. Hardly less so because he looked older in the post office than he had done formerly. The worry lines, whose absence she had remarked, were there now.
One hasty glance had shown them to her; they were so apparent. She wondered—a kindly feeling stealing over her—whether she had anything to do with it: the change. Then memory came and withered up the softness; pointed out what had been said to her that night when she knelt by the seat! The memory was a blasting breath; her softness fell away.
The mere remembrance of it made her feel hot all over. She—she to kneel to a man! Because she had fancied he was ill—full of kind feelings towards him, she had knelt; and he had talked of hugging and slobbering! To have her kindness, so well meant, recoil on her, thrown back on her hands as it were, with gratuitous, unwarranted insult instead of thanks!
It is galling to have a gift returned; the gall is greater when the gift is of the heart's kindness; more galling still when the ungracious recipient vacates a place in that heart itself. The return then savours of brutality.
Fury, too, came to her at the mere memory of his speech. She was almost as angry as when the words rang freshly in her ears. But with all the temper there was mingled wonder. Surely he could not be a man to whom brutality came easily. Why—why—why—had he behaved so?
Fool? No. She told herself that she was not that. She had read in his eyes that he loved her; indeed, had more than once checked his telling her so. What could be the cause?
He had spoken of seeing her in the back garden that night—but that was a mere incident—there were a thousand-and-one explanations of that. He would know that; there must have been something else.
But why should she worry herself about the matter—about the man? Plainly he was not worthy a second thought. Ready to misjudge her as he had been—well let him! She did not care; not a scrap. She was quite capable of fighting her way alone.
Then she picked up one of the books of his he had given her. On the fly leaf she read: