His gaze slowly moved until it was almost upon hers, and there it rested.
"You have made up your mind to get out of the world, if they defeat you."
He laughed noisily. "Absurd! I'm not a romantic person, like your friend Boris. I'm a plain man of business. We don't do melodramatic things.... Come!" He took her scarf from the chair where she had dropped it. "You must go."
For answer she slipped off the cloak, deliberately lined a chair with it, and seated herself. "I shall stay," said she, "until I have your promise not to be a coward."
He looked at her with measuring eyes. She was very pale and seemed slight and frail; her skin was transparent, her expression ethereal. But the curve of her chin, though oval and soft, was as resolute as his own.
"'I felt I must see you—must see you at once.'"
"You asked for my friendship," she continued. "I gave it. Now, the time has come for me to show that my words were not an empty phrase.... Horace, you are in no condition to judge of your own affairs. You live alone. You have no one you can trust, no one you can talk things over with."
He nodded in assent.
"You must tell me the whole story. Bring it out of the darkness where you've been brooding over it. You can trust me. Just talking about it will give you a new, a clearer point of view."