“I only ask him to wait——”
“Yes,” Owen, broke in, “and you won’t say how long!”
Both instinctively addressed themselves to Anna, who stood, nearly as shaken as themselves, between the double shock of their struggle. She looked again from Sophy’s inscrutable eyes to Owen’s stormy features; then she said: “What can I do, when there’s clearly something between you that I don’t know about?”
“Oh, if it were between us! Can’t you see it’s outside of us—outside of her, dragging at her, dragging her away from me?” Owen wheeled round again upon his step-mother.
Anna turned from him to the girl. “Is it true that you want to break your engagement? If you do, you ought to tell him now.”
Owen burst into a laugh. “She doesn’t dare to—she’s afraid I’ll guess the reason!”
A faint sound escaped from Sophy’s lips, but she kept them close on whatever answer she had ready.
“If she doesn’t wish to marry you, why should she be afraid to have you know the reason?”
“She’s afraid to have you know it—not me!”
“To have me know it?”