He stopped, and stared close into her face. ‘What has become of you?’ he asked, bewildered again, a dreadful sense of loss cold on his heart. ‘Oh, Catherine—what have you done to yourself?’
‘Why, that’s just it,’ she said, the faintest shadow of a smile trembling a moment in her eyes. ‘I haven’t done anything to myself.’
‘But your hair—your lovely hair——’
He made agonised motions with his hands.
‘It’s all gone grey because of—of what you’ve been through, you poor, poor little thing——’
And again he knew he ought to take her in his arms and comfort her, and again he couldn’t.
‘No, it wasn’t that made it go grey,’ she said. ‘It was grey before, only I used to have it dyed.’
He stared at her, entirely bewildered. Catherine looking like this, and saying these things. Why did she say them? Why was she so anxious to make out that all this had nothing to do with Virginia’s death? Was it some strange idea of sparing him the pain of being sorry for her? Or was she so terribly smitten that she was no longer accountable for what she said? If this was it, then all the more closely should he fold her to his heart and shield and comfort her, and what a damned scoundrel he was not to. But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not that minute. Perhaps presently, when he had got more used....
‘You dyed it?’ he repeated stupidly.
‘Yes. Or rather Maria Rome did.’