“Feelings? Your feelings?” She laughed again. “And my own daughter’s—ah, but I didn’t mean to name her even!” she exclaimed.
“Well, I’m glad you’ve named her. You’ve answered your own question.” He paused, and then added in a low voice: “You know what she is when she cares....”
“Ah, don’t you name her—I forbid you! You say you loved her, not knowing. I believe you.... I pity you.... I want to pity you.... But nothing can change the facts, can change the past. There’s nothing for you now but to go.”
He stood before her, his eyes on the ground. At last he raised them again, but only for the length of a quick glance. “You think then ... a past like that ... irrevocable?”
She sprang to her feet, strong now in her unmitigated scorn. “Irrevocable? Irrevocable? And you ask me this ... with her in your mind? Ah—but you’re abominable!”
“Am I? I don’t know ... my head reels with it. She’s terribly young; she feels things terribly. She won’t give up—she wouldn’t before.”
“Don’t—don’t! Leave her out of this. I’m not here to discuss her with you, I’m here to tell you to go, and to go at once.”
He made no answer, but turned and walked across the room and back. Then he sank into his chair, and renewed his study of the carpet. Finally he looked up again, with one of the tentative glances she knew so well: those glances that seemed to meet one’s answer half-way in their desire to say what one would expect of him. “Is there any use in your taking this tone?”
Again that appeal—it was too preposterous! But suddenly, her eyes on the huddled misery of his attitude, the weakness of his fallen features, she understood that the cry was real; that he was in agony, and had turned to her for help. She crossed the room and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“No; you’re right; it’s of no use. If you’ll listen I’ll try to be calm. I want to spare you—why shouldn’t I want to?”