"I swear to you, Greta, you're wrong if you think—nobody wanted me to come. I've had to move heaven and earth, I had to beg and beg—"
"Beg who?"
"Why, beg—no, I wasn't to say that. It doesn't matter now. But it's been more difficult than you can think. I gave them no peace. I had to see you."
"Why?"
Nan felt guiltily that Greta had guessed that part of the answer was because of a consuming curiosity. What Greta wouldn't, couldn't, know was the pain and compassion that swept the girl after her first moment of recoil.
"Why?" Nan repeated. "Because of—what used to be." Greta seemed not to hear. The girl was so aware of this that she raised her voice a little and spoke with deliberate distinctness. "I didn't know if you had any one you could depend on."
"You do know. I was fool enough to tell you."
"Only Ernst!"
The fierce instinctive warning in Greta's face against utterance of that name, changed to contempt:
"But they'll have got that out of you before you came here. Much good it will do them." And then she found the strangest ground for triumph. "He can take care of himself. They learned that at Liverpool. And because he can take care of himself he can take care of me. If only"—her voice fell huskily—