He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or apathy which had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for indecision; but, whatever it was, she shook it off and declared once for all that she would never leave Dr. Baumgartner, even if everything was true about him, and he as mad as that would make him out.
“But he is!” cried Pocket, with most eager conviction. “That’s the only possible explanation, and you’d believe it fast enough if you’d heard all he said to me that first night, and been with me in the dark-room when he developed his negative of the man he said I shot! You’d see how it all fits in, and how this other negative this morning simply shows he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of course he’s mad; but that’s the very reason why I can’t go and leave you with him.”
“He would be as he’s always been to me.”
“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket.
“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?”
“Because I can’t.”
“Because you won’t!”
“Very well, because I won’t and never will! But, mind you, it’ll be your fault if anything happens to either of us after this!”
He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal obstinacy, and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He stood chained in fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but he was prepared to stand there like a man, and he did not deserve the things she said to him in a fresh paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He might be a baby, but he was not a complete coward, or simply trying to make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on this occasion, was he thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to realise that, for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing up the stairs.