He looked surprised that she should seem to accuse him of it, and she wondered if he could have forgotten how he had denied it before.
"And that isn't why you distrust him?"
The devil's tattoo that he beat on his hat stopped.
"I don't distrust him."
"Well, dislike him, then. When was it that you saw him before?"
"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I don't want you to see him?"
"Oh!" She turned away from him. Every nerve in her was in revolt. Then he really wasn't going to tell her anything. He was keeping her out of it as if she were a child. She had relied on him to return the ring. She had counted upon his indifference and good nature. And he was neither indifferent nor good-natured. All desire of even mentioning the ring to him left her; and as to giving him her confidence—These hints that he had thrown out about Kerr—they might be mere jealousy—but he might have actual knowledge, knowledge that, with her own fitted to it, would make for him a complete figure. She caught her breath at the thought of how near she had come to actually betraying Kerr. Until that moment she had not realized that through all her waverings her one fixed intention had been not to betray him.
Harry had risen and was buttoning his overcoat. "You know you're never at home if you don't want to be," he said.
She stood misleadingly drooping before him. But though her appearance was passive enough for the most exacting lover her will had never been in more vigorous revolt. She knew Harry was taking her weariness for acquiescence, and she let him take it so. She even followed him into the hall, and with a vague idea of further propitiation, nodded away Shima and opened the door for him herself.
The fog was a chasm of white outside. Harry turned on the brink of it. "By the way, where's Clara?"