"If you noticed so much and never tried to warn me, you are certainly to blame." Clare's voice was full of reluctant conviction. "I can't remember that you tried very hard."
"Oh, Clare!" began Alwynne. Their eyes met. Clare's face was hard and impassive—all trace of emotion gone. Her eyes challenged. Alwynne's lids dropped as she finished her sentence. "That is—no, I didn't try very hard."
"And why not?"
Inconceivably an answer suggested itself to Alwynne, an unutterable iconoclasm. Her mind edged away from it horrified and in an instant it was not. But it had been.
"I don't know," she stammered.
"You realised the responsibility you incurred?" Clare went on.
"I didn't. No, never!" Alwynne supplicated her.
"Oh, yes," she said despairingly. She rejoiced that Clare could believe and be comforted, but it hurt her that she believed so easily. It alarmed her, too, made her, knowing her own motives, yet doubt herself. She felt trapped.
"I'm sorry you told me," said Clare abruptly.