Katharine clenched her hands in the effort to keep back her tears.
"I am not going to stay," she cried, miserably. "I can't understand why you are so cruel to me; I think it must amuse you to hurt me. Why do you ask me to come and see you sometimes, quite as late as this, and then object to my coming to-night? I don't know what you mean."
Paul lighted his cigarette before he answered her.
"You have quite a talent, Katharine, for asking uncomfortable questions. If you cannot see the difference between coming when you are asked, and coming uninvited, I am afraid I cannot help you. Would you like any coffee or anything?"
All at once her brain began to clear. For two hours she had been wandering aimlessly through the streets, in a strange bewilderment of mind, not knowing why she was there nor where she was going. Then she had found herself in Fleet Street; and habit, rather than intention, had brought her to the Temple. And now his maddening indifference had touched her pride, and her deadened faculties began slowly to revive under the shock. She put her fingers over her eyes, and tried to think. The blood rushed to her face, and she thrilled all over with a passionate instinct of resistance. He did not know what to make of her, when she stepped suddenly in front of him and faced him unflinchingly.
"You must not expect me to see the difference," she said, proudly. "I shall never understand why I have to make a secret of what is not wrong, nor why you allow me to do it at all if it is wrong. I think you have been playing with my friendship all the time; I can see now that you have not valued it, because I gave it you so freely. But I didn't know that; I wasn't clever enough; and I had never liked anybody but you. I didn't know that I ought to hide it, and pretend that I didn't like you. Perhaps, if I had done that you would have gone on liking me."
He was going to interrupt her, but she did not give him time.
"Would you ask Marion Keeley to come and see you, as you have asked me?"
Paul's face grew dark, and she trembled suddenly at her own boldness.
"I fail to see how such a question can interest either of us," he said, coldly.