‘No, no,’ says the girl, shaking her head with conviction. She is very pale now. ‘To me it seems that he has left home to look for me. I know—I know’—affrightedly—‘that he is looking for me.’
‘Just because you saw a fancied resemblance to him in a man going down the road?’
‘Not that altogether, though that did give me a shock, and I still fancy—’
‘Come, that is being absolutely morbid,’ says Wyndham, with a touch of impatience. ‘The man is gone, believe me. And even if not, what claim has he on you?’
‘That I don’t know, but he said he had a “hold on me” until I was twenty-one, and I am only eighteen’—with a sigh that is evidently full of a desire to wish away three good years of her young life.
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ says Wyndham promptly. ‘And in the meantime, now that in my opinion he is well out of the way, why don’t you try to enjoy your life—to see people, to—’
‘I am enjoying life. Oh’—with a sudden, quick, happy smile—‘if you only knew how much!’
‘Yet you confess to loneliness—to a desire to see those around you.’
‘Yes.’ She colours and taps her foot on the ground, then laughs. ‘And now I have seen them,’ says she, with a swift upward glance at him that lasts only for a moment.
‘The Barrys, yes; but there are others, and now you know the Barrys you can easily know everyone else down here; you can make friends for yourself, and go out, and pay visits, and—’