He was in a tiny room by himself, the blind was up and the big window looked on to a great hill, like the hunched shoulder of a giant.
"Why did you come?" he said. "Why did you come?"
I knelt beside the bed. I was trembling and I felt sicker than ever.
Above the titanic shoulder of the hill the tiny bare white shoulder of the moon shrugged itself into view.
"I can't!" I pleaded. "Not now."
"My dear, you must. If I go out to-night I go out—wondering."
I began to tell him. I told him all about meeting Cheneston in the searchlight, and how the mistake about our being engaged had started. I told him that Grace Gilpin and Cheneston loved each other. I told him all about somebody writing to Cheneston's mother and telling her that Cheneston was engaged to me. I told him how fearfully ill she was, and that I had gone to Cromer Court because she so passionately wanted to see her son's future wife.
"But why did you come to me?" he said.
The moonlight was sweeping down the hill to us now, an incoming tide of limpid silver. I looked out of the window desperately.
"I told Cheneston you and I cared—I wanted him to feel free to marry Grace. This morning he—he was coming to you—Cheneston was—he was so afraid you would misunderstand my being at Cromer Court, and think I had ceased to care for you. Also this morning I had a note from Grace Gilpin telling me you were here, asking me what I was going to do about it."