“Look here!” he said. “I—” His voice was so unsteady that he could not go on for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize how—how young you are. If you’ll forgive me—”
She shook her head mutely. He waited in vain for a word, but none came. Then he turned and walked away, and she went back into her own room and locked the door.
She, too, had not realized how young she was, how untried her strength. This overwhelmed her; she was so miserable, so shaken, that now at last the tears came in a wild storm. Her pride was mortally wounded. It was a disgrace to her that[Pg 303] Sam Randall should think of her like that. It was cruel, horrible, unforgetable, that the first words of love she had ever heard from a man should be his words. His talk of love was a mockery, an insult.
Yet the memory of his set face and his unsteady voice caused her a strange pain that was not anger.
“I can’t understand!” she cried to herself. “I can’t understand!”
And it was the first time in her life that Geraldine, with her rigid code, her intolerant and sharply defined opinions, had ever thought that.
VI
Jesse Page ordered the car stopped at the entrance to the driveway, and went the rest of the way on foot. The stars were out in the bland summer sky, and among the dark trees, stirred by no wind, the house with its lighted windows had a gay and delicate beauty, an air of festival. Down by the sea wall the little yacht was moored, swinging gently, throwing into the black water two little quivering pools of red and green; but there was not a sound from house or garden.
“Not even a dog to bark when I come home!” he thought, with a faint, bitter smile.
Heaven knows he had made this solitude for himself! He was a man who had found it easy to win affection—so easy that he distrusted what cost him so little effort. He could believe in nothing and no one—himself least of all.