“Oh!” she said, and felt her face aflame, and was grateful for the darkness which concealed her confusion. “I cannot give a reason for every impulse that moves me. I wanted to walk.”
“Excuse me if I accuse you once more of insincerity,” he said. “It was no impulse that prompted you to ask me. It was a deliberate and premeditated request which cost you some effort to make. Your concern for me is very flattering. But you waste your sympathy. What do you imagine you accomplish by this display of energy? You will overtire yourself, that is all. For me, it is merely a long time between drinks.”
Tears came into her eyes. She hoped he did not see them, but she could not have kept them back. He hurt her even more than he intended to.
“I don’t care,” she said, a little unsteadily, “how hard you box my ears. I am glad I asked you to come. I’m glad you came.” She raised her face suddenly and lifted defiant eyes to his.
“I am sorry I was insincere. You got me there. I didn’t know you were so observant. In future I’ll be absolutely frank with you. I’ll be frank now, even if it angers you. I asked you to come out because I think it is a shame for you to spend your evenings as you do. I think it is a shame that you should waste your life. I’m not so much sorry for you as savage with you. It’s hateful in you. It’s the one thing which spoils you from being absolutely fine.”
She broke off abruptly, startled at her own vehemence, immensely embarrassed, and horrified with herself. The man was staring at her, staring in amazement, incredulous and almost bewildered by the surprising rush of words. He had never in his life been so thunderstruck, nor had he ever before listened to such plain speaking. He was silent in face of this retort for which he had been in no sense prepared.
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, aghast at her own daring. “What must you think of me? I never meant to attack you like this. It’s—abominable.”
“Whatever I think of you,” he answered, “I can never again call you insincere. You have hurled truths at me to-night. You were quite right in everything you said; but—forgive me—you were quite wrong in saying them. However, largely that’s my own fault for provoking you. It was inconsiderate to push my inquiries; it would be illogical if I complained because you answered them. We’ll wipe the incident out. At least we understand one another. In future, when I see you making your social effort, I shall recognise that you are started on your morality campaign.”
“Please don’t,” she said falteringly, with a catch so suggestive of repressed emotion in her tones that he repented the ill-nature of his words.
He glanced down at her as she walked beside him along the dim road, hatless, with the soft hair shading her partly averted face; then he straightened his stooping shoulders with a jerk, and looked about him at the darkening landscape, and up at the sky, where the young moon rode serenely in a star-strewn cloudless sky. It was a fine night, warm and still; the wan moonlight pierced the dusk palely, revealing the road cutting like a path of silver across the velvety darkness of the veld.