"I am going to England next week!" he said. Betty was shocked to perceive that this news hurt her. Well, why shouldn't it hurt her? She wasn't absolutely insensible to friendship, she supposed. And sensibility to friendship was nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary.
"I shall miss you most awfully," said she with the air of one flaunting a flag.
"I wish you'd go home," he said. "Haven't you had enough of your experiment, or whatever it was, yet?"
"I thought you'd given up interfering," she said crossly. At least she meant to speak crossly.
"I thought I could say anything to you now without your—your not understanding."
"So you can." She was suddenly not cross again.
"Ah, no I can't," he said. "I want to say things to you that I can't say here. Won't you go home? Won't you let me come to see you there? Say I may. You will let me?"
If she said Yes—she refused to pursue that train of thought another inch. If she said No—then a sudden end—and forever an end—to this good companionship. "I wish I had never, never seen Him!" she told herself.
Then she found that she was speaking.
"The reason I was all alone in Paris," she was saying. The reason took a long time to expound.—The shadow withdrew itself and they had to shift the camp just when it came to the part about Betty's first meeting with Temple himself.