He was abjectly in love and abjectly submissive, and Claudia had never been so kind. But when at last she told him ‘You must go,’ he strained her in his arms so wildly that he fairly frightened her. Then, terrified in his own turn, he released her, and covered her hand with tears and kisses of contrition.
‘Go,’ she said pantingly—‘go, at once!’
He looked with remorse at her pale face and questioning eyes, and lurched towards the table on which he had laid his hat.
‘Paul,’ said Claudia, ‘it would have been better for you if you had never met me.’
‘No,’ he answered, looking back at her. ‘I shall never think that, whatever happens.’
‘You will think it often,’ she said. ‘But go now, dear, for pity’s sake.’
He went out into the street with his wet face, and for a minute or more did not know why people stared at him. Then he came to his senses a little, and found himself walking away from the station instead of towards it He retraced his steps, caught his train, and travelled up to London, his pulses beating ‘Claudia’ all the way.
CHAPTER XII
Claudia’s introduction served so well that Paul was allowed to show what he was made of in rehearsal at the Mirror Theatre, with a prospective salary of fifty shillings a week. He had been a personage of late, and Darco had delegated to him a good deal of his own authority. He was not a personage any longer, and he was not altogether happy in his fall from dignity. But Claudia was coming. He and Claudia would be in the same house together, and playing at the same theatre. He would see her at breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner; he would escort her from the theatre and home again. That would be happiness enough to atone for anything.