“Mr. Saton,” she said, “I am sorry—but you must really let me go.”
He did not move.
“It is very hard to let you go,” he murmured. “Can’t you—don’t you realize a little that it is always hard for me to see you go—to see you leave the world where we have at least interests in common, to go back to a life of which I know so little, a life in which I have so small a part, a life which is scarcely worthy of you, Pauline?”
Again she felt a sort of physical impotence. She struggled desperately against the loss of nerve power which kept her there. She would have given anything in the world to have left him, to have run out of the room with a little shriek, out into the streets and squares she knew so well, to breathe the air she had known all her life, to escape from this unknown emotion. She told herself that she hated the man whose will kept her there. She was sure of it. And yet—!
“I do not understand you,” she said, “and I must, I really must go. Can’t you see that just now, at any rate, I don’t want to understand?” she added, fighting all the time for her words. “I want to go. Please do not keep me here against my will. Do you understand? Let me go, and I will be grateful to you.”
Somehow the strain seemed suddenly lightened. He was only a very ordinary, rather doubtful sort of person—a harmless but necessary part of interesting things. He had moved toward the door, which he was holding open for her to pass through.
“Thank you so much,” she said, with genuine relief in her tone. “I have stayed an unconscionable time, and I found your Master delightful.”
“You will come again?” he said softly. “I want to explain a little further what Naudheim was saying. I can take you a little further, even, than he did to-day.”
“You must come and see me,” she answered lightly. “Remember that after all the world has conventions.”
He stepped back on to the doorstep after he had handed her into her carriage. She threw herself back amongst the cushions with something that was like a sob of relief. She had sensations which she could not analyze—a curious feeling of having escaped, and yet coupled with it a sense of something new and strange in her life, something of which she was a little afraid, and yet from which she would not willingly have parted. She told herself that she detested the house which she had left, detested the thought of that darkened room. Nevertheless, she was forced to look back. He was standing in the open doorway, from which the butler had discreetly retired, and meeting her eyes he bowed once more. She tried to smile unconcernedly, but failed. She looked away with scarcely a return of his greeting.