Agatha understood him. She pressed his poor head against her arm.
"What is it? What is it, Edwy?" asked she. There was quick anxiety in her tone.
Her voice was unheard by him, but his eyes followed hers and the movement of her lips. Some thread in his weak brain caught at the meaning of her words. His fingers clutched her and closed upon both her arms. The pain was excessive, almost beyond bearing, and Agatha tried to shake herself free. But after a first effort she checked herself. The agony in the poor boy's face, usually so expressionless, moved her so powerfully that she stood still, bearing the pain courageously.
She managed to lay her hand, however, on the large bony one (so singularly muscular) that was grasping her right arm, and after a moment or two Edwy relaxed his hold.
"Aunt Hilda," cried Agatha, turning to the window. "What can be the matter?" But Mrs. Greatorex, who had carefully taken refuge behind the window curtains, from which safety point she could see without being seen, declined to leave her shelter to solve the problem offered her.
"Send him away! send him away!" she screamed dramatically, safe in the knowledge that the idiot could not hear her. "He is going mad. I can see it in his eyes. He'll murder you if you encourage him any further. Get rid of him, Agatha, I implore you, before he does any mischief."
"Oh no, it isn't that. It is only that he is in terrible distress about something."
At this moment Edwy rose to his feet, and, approaching her, began to gesticulate violently and make loud guttural sounds. In vain Agatha tried to understand him. Finally, as if dimly aware that his cries and gestures conveyed no meaning to her, the idiot seized her by both arms and turned her in the direction from which he had just come. Then he waited a moment, but seeing her immovable, an access of fury seemed to take hold of him, and catching her by her arm and shoulder, he began to drag her forcibly along with him, so forcibly that Agatha felt she had no power to battle with him, and that it would be useless to resist.
She did resist, however, with all her might, useless as it was. She herself was young, strong, and lithe, but this squat, broad creature, over whose head she could look, held her powerless in his grasp.
With fierce impatience he hurried her forward, in spite of her now almost frantic struggles to free herself from the clasp of his long arms.