He let her draw away from him, but he kept his arm about her. She looked at him, and found him intently watching her. Her eyes fell, and rested upon the letter which lay crumpled under her hands.
"A dreadful thing has happened to me," she said. "Robin has written to say—to say—that he cannot marry me!"
"What is there dreadful in that?" said Mercer.
She did not look up, though his words startled her a little.
"It—has made me feel like—like a stray cat again," she said, with the ghost of a smile about her lips. "Of course, I know I'm foolish. There must be plenty of ways in which a woman can earn her living here. You yourself were thinking of something that I might do, weren't you?"
"I was," said Mercer. He laid his great hand upon hers, paused a moment, then deliberately drew her letter from beneath them and crushed it into a ball. "But I want you to tell me something before we go into that. The truth, mind! It must be the truth!"
"Yes?" she questioned, with her head bent.
"You must look at me," he said, "or I shan't believe you."
There was something Napoleonic about his words which placed them wholly beyond the sphere of offensiveness. Slowly she turned her head and looked him in the eyes.
He took his arm abruptly away from her.