He met the question with his easy smile. “Oh, as to that—leave him with any idea of me he chooses! But leave him, at any rate, free.”
“Free?” she echoed in surprise.
“Simply let things be. You’ve surely done all you could for him and Miss Viner. If they don’t hit it off it’s their own affair. What possible motive can you have for trying to interfere now?”
Her gaze widened to a deeper wonder. “Why—naturally, what he says of you!”
“I don’t care a straw what he says of me! In such a situation a boy in love will snatch at the most far-fetched reason rather than face the mortifying fact that the lady may simply be tired of him.”
“You don’t quite understand Owen. Things go deep with him, and last long. It took him a long time to recover from his other unlucky love affair. He’s romantic and extravagant: he can’t live on the interest of his feelings. He worships Sophy and she seemed to be fond of him. If she’s changed it’s been very sudden. And if they part like this, angrily and inarticulately, it will hurt him horribly—hurt his very soul. But that, as you say, is between the two. What concerns me is his associating you with their quarrel. Owen’s like my own son—if you’d seen him when I first came here you’d know why. We were like two prisoners who talk to each other by tapping on the wall. He’s never forgotten it, nor I. Whether he breaks with Sophy, or whether they make it up, I can’t let him think you had anything to do with it.”
She raised her eyes entreatingly to Darrow’s, and read in them the forbearance of the man resigned to the discussion of non-existent problems.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to,” he said; “but I don’t yet know what it is.”
His smile seemed to charge her with inconsequence, and the prick to her pride made her continue: “After all, it’s not so unnatural that Owen, knowing you and Sophy to be almost strangers, should wonder what you were saying to each other when he saw you talking together.”
She felt a warning tremor as she spoke, as though some instinct deeper than reason surged up in defense of its treasure. But Darrow’s face was unstirred save by the flit of his half-amused smile.