"Ah! I thought so." She met his look with eyes that did not seem to see him. "We were children then, Eustace," she said, "children playing on the sands. But the great tide caught us. You breasted the waves, but I was broken and thrown aside. I could never play on the sands again. I can only lie and wait for the tide to come again and float me away."
He clenched his hands. "Do you think I would let you go—like that?" he said.
"It is the only kindness you can do me," she answered in her low voice of pleading.
He swung round to go. "I curse the day," he said very bitterly, "that you ever met Basil Everard! I curse his memory!"
She flinched at the words as if they had been a blow. Her face turned suddenly grey. She clasped her hands very tightly together, saying no word.
He went to the door and paused, his back towards her. "I came in," he said then, "to tell you that the de Vignes have offered to put us up at their place for the wedding. And I have accepted."
He waited for some rejoinder but she made none. It was as if she had not heard. Her eyes had the impotent, stricken look of one who has searched dim distances for some beloved object—and searched in vain.
He did not glance round. His temper was on edge. With a fierce movement he pulled open the door and departed. And behind him like a veil there fell the silence of a great despair.