“I’d better go,” Sophy murmured at length with lowered head.
The words roused in Anna a latent impulse of compunction. The girl looked so young, so exposed and desolate! And what thoughts must she be hiding in her heart! It was impossible that they should part in such a spirit.
“I want you to know that no one said anything.... It was I who...”
Sophy looked at her. “You mean that Mr. Darrow didn’t tell you? Of course not: do you suppose I thought he did? You found it out, that’s all—I knew you would. In your place I should have guessed it sooner.”
The words were spoken simply, without irony or emphasis; but they went through Anna like a sword. Yes, the girl would have had divinations, promptings that she had not had! She felt half envious of such a sad precocity of wisdom.
“I’m so sorry ... so sorry...” she murmured.
“Things happen that way. Now I’d better go. I’d like to say good-bye to Effie.”
“Oh——” it broke in a cry from Effie’s mother. “Not like this—you mustn’t! I feel—you make me feel too horribly: as if I were driving you away...” The words had rushed up from the depths of her bewildered pity.
“No one is driving me away: I had to go,” she heard the girl reply.
There was another silence, during which passionate impulses of magnanimity warred in Anna with her doubts and dreads. At length, her eyes on Sophy’s face: “Yes, you must go now,” she began; “but later on ... after a while, when all this is over ... if there’s no reason why you shouldn’t marry Owen——” she paused a moment on the words— “I shouldn’t want you to think I stood between you...”