“Good God! You here! Don’t go away!” he exclaimed, as though she was running from him. Anne stepped back and stood for a moment staring in astonishment into his red face.
His words sounded angry, and his blue eyes glittered angrily so that she felt afraid and her first impulse was to run back into the house. “I cannot go up there again,” flashed through her mind, and she turned again to Grandison.
“Miss Dunnock,” said the young man, still looking at her, almost murderously. “I must make an explanation.”
The word explanation caught her ears. “No, that is impossible,” she said to herself for some reason. “An explanation is impossible.”
“I don’t understand,” she said in a weak voice, giving up all thoughts of flight. She was almost in tears. “I don’t understand anything.”
Grandison’s anger or passion seemed suddenly to have completely disappeared. He looked at her appealingly with an expression in which she could read pity for her and misery on his own account. For a moment he tried to speak and choked, and then, swallowing, went on rapidly:
“It is rather complicated. I am taking away my furniture to a new room and must superintend the man unpacking it. If you could come with me in the van we could talk to each other.”
The van was packed; the man was waiting, impatient of their conversation. Anne did not hesitate, but scrambled up on to the tail-board of the van and settled herself on the rolled-up mattress.
She was excited without knowing why, and suddenly, looking at Grandison perched beside her on the edge of the wash-hand-stand, she felt happy and secure.
“I want to explain,” he said suddenly, as though he were defending himself. “This is my furniture. I am taking it away from the studio because I cannot live with Richard or with Ginette any longer. I have broken with them completely, and have taken a room of my own.”