Saton passed his hand across his forehead. Her words had touched his keen imagination. The horror of the scene was upon him, too, once more.
“Don’t!” he begged—“don’t! Lois!”
“Well?” she asked.
“You will not speak of this to anyone?”
“No!” she answered, sadly, leaning a little forward, with her head resting upon her clasped hands. “I don’t suppose that I shall. If he had died, it would have been different. Now that he is going to get well, I suppose I shall try to forget.”
“To forget,” he murmured, trying to take her hand.
She drew it away with a shiver.
“No!” she said. “That is finished. I had to see you. I had to talk to you. Go away, please. I cannot bear to see you any more. It is too terrible—too terrible!”
A born cajoler of women, he forced into play all his powers. He whispered a flood of words in her ear. His own voice shook, his eyes were soft. He pleaded as one beside himself. Lois—Lois whom he had found so sensitive, so easily moved, so gently affectionate—remained like a stone. At the end of all his pleadings she simply looked away.
“Do you mind,” she asked, “leaving me? Please! Please!”