And he strode out savagely into the sun; but a different Sidney was back next moment, one that reminded Gwynneth of the very old days, when he would pass her whistling with his dog. A sneer was on his lips, and his dry eyes glittered.
"I beg your pardon for making a scene, Gwynneth; it isn't in my line, as you know, and I apologise. But do you mind telling me when you discovered that you had—changed?"
"I have not changed, Sidney. That is my shame."
"Do you mean that you never did care about me?"
"Never in that way. I am ashamed to say it—more humiliated and ashamed than you can ever know. But it's the truth."
"Yet at the First Trinity ball, I remember, if you don't——"
His tone was more than Gwynneth could endure.
"Yes, I remember," she cried; "and I can explain it, though explanations are no excuse. Sidney, you know what my life was until the last few months? Happy enough in heaps of ways, but not the least gaiety in it; and suddenly I felt the want of it. I felt it first abroad, and you met that want in your May-week in a way beyond my dreams. You may sneer at me now, but you were awfully nice to me then, and I shall never, never forget it. You were so nice that I honestly did think for a little that you met every other want as well! Yet I tell you now, what I tried to tell you once before, that when once you had spoken nothing was the same. It was like touching a bubble. The bubble had burst."
"You felt like that from the first?"
Gwynneth turned away, for now they were both upon their feet, restlessly hovering between the summer-house and the sunlight.