"Naomi!" he cried, "come to me, my girl! Don't be afraid. I swear I'll be good to you, and I'm a man that keeps his oath! Come to me, I say!"
But she held back from him, her face still white and calm.
"No, Geoffrey," she said very firmly, "I haven't come back to you for that. When I left you, I left you for good. And you know why. I never meant to see your face again. You had made my life with you impossible. I have only come to-day as—as a matter of principle, because I heard you were going to marry again."
The man's arms fell slowly.
"You were always rather great on principle," he said, in an odd tone.
He was not angry—that she saw. But the sudden dying away of the eagerness on his face made him look old and different. This was not the man whose hurricanes of violence had once overwhelmed her, whose unrestrained passions had finally driven her from him to take refuge in a lie.
"I should not have come," she said, speaking with less assurance, "if it had not been to prevent a wrong being done to another woman."
His expression did not change.
"I see," he said quietly. "Who sent you? Carey?"
She flushed uncontrollably at the question, though there was no offence in the tone in which it was uttered.