“Now, how am I to say what I’ve got to say, if you keep on like that?” demanded he. “Oh, but you are crafty!”
“I don’t want to be lectured, Chang.”
He settled himself with an air of inflexible resolution. “I’m not going to lecture,” said he. “I’m going to deliver myself of a few words of good sense and then say good-by.”
She looked upon the ground, and her expression wrenched his tender heart. In vain he told himself that he was an egotistical fool; that the girl was probably more than half faking, to work upon him; that the other half of the feeling in her expression was the flimsiest youthful infatuation, certain to disappear in a few days, a few weeks at most. There, before him, was the look of suffering. And when she lifted her eyes for an instant they said more touchingly than her voice could have said it: “Why don’t you strike and have done with me? I am helpless.”
He got up, tossed his cigarette far into the lake. “This is too rotten!” he cried. “How in the devil did I ever get into such a mess?”
She waited, meek, silent, pathetic.
“I’ve about decided to go away—to go back to Paris,” said he.
“Maybe we can cross together,” said she. “Mother and I are going soon. She wants me to go right away—there, or anywhere, wherever I wish.”
He dropped to the bowlder again, a sense of helplessness weakening his backbone and his knees. Of what use to fly? This girl was free—had the means to travel wherever she chose, to stay as long as she liked. In his excitement he saw visions of himself being pursued round and round the earth—till his money gave out, and he, unable to fly farther, was overtaken and captured. He began to laugh—laugh until the tears rolled down his cheeks.
“What is it?” asked she. “Tell me. I want to laugh.”