A hardness had crept into his tones. His jealousy had sprung into a flame. He remembered those photographs of Tom in her bedroom. There had always been other men at the back of her life. How did he know whom she met or what she did, when he was away from her?
“Meester Deek,” she clutched at him, “don’t You—you frighten me. I’ve done nothing wrong. I haven’t I’ve spent every moment with Fluffy.”
“That didn’t keep you from writing.”
“No.” She laid her face against his pleadingly. “That didn’t prevent It was—— Oh, Meester Deek, won’t you understand—you’ve always been so unjudging? At Les Baux that night you wakened something—something that I’d never felt. I didn’t dare to trust myself. It wasn’t you that I distrusted. I wanted to go somewhere alone—somewhere where I could think and come to myself. If I’d written to you, or received letters from you——”
“Desire, let’s speak the truth. We promised always to be honest You say you went with Fluffy to be alone; you know you didn’t. Fluffy’s never alone—she’s a queen bee with the drones always buzzing round her. You went away to get rid of me, and for the fun of seeing whether you could recall me.”
“Not that. Truly not that” She paused and drew a long breath, like a diver getting ready for a deep plunge. “It was because I was afraid that, if I stopped longer, we might have to marry. A girl may be cold—she mayn’t even love a man, but if she trifles too long with his affections, she herself sometimes catches fire. That was how my mother—with my father.”
“Then why did you send for me?” His tone was stern and puzzled.
For a time she was silent. It seemed to him that she was searching for a plausible motive. Then, “I think because I wanted to see a good man.”
He tried to smile cynically. She had fooled him too many times for him to allow himself to be caught so easily as that. The scales had fallen from his eyes. She had always made whatever uprightness he possessed a reproach to him.
“You don’t believe me?” She scanned his face wistfully. “You never did understand me or—or any girls.”