Rigden came slowly to her side. She took no notice of him. His chair was as he had pushed it back an age ago; he drew it nearer than before, and sat down. Nor was this the end of his effrontery.
"Don't touch my hand, please!"
She would not even look at him. In a flash his face was slashed with lines, so deep you might have looked for them to fill with blood. There was plenty of blood beneath the skin. But he obeyed her promptly.
"I am sorry you were present just now," he remarked, as though nothing very tragical had happened. There was none the less an underlying note of tragedy which Moya entirely misconstrued.
"So am I," said she; and her voice nipped like a black frost.
"I wanted you to go, you know!" he reminded her.
"Do you really think it necessary to tell me that?"
All this time she was back in her now invisible advertisements. And her tone was becoming more and more worthy of a Bethune.
"I naturally didn't want you to hear me tell a lie," explained Rigden, with inconsistent honesty.
"On the contrary, I'm very glad to have heard it," rejoined Moya. "It's instructive, to say the least."