The tapping of Ned's stick on the floor, which had been going on as he sat, his elbow on his knees, listening, ceased. "Then you mean to say," he said slowly, rising as he spoke, "that when I saw--Aura--the other day--she----" Suddenly he laughed--"Good-bye, Ted; you're not a bad sort of a chap on the whole--but you have the devil's own luck! If I had only known--if I had guessed that she----" His voice rose in sudden anger, then paused. What was the good?
"Are you going to finish your sentence, Lord Blackborough?" flared up Ted in anger also.
"Yes!" replied Ned without an instant's hesitation, reverting to his usual tone, "I am going to finish it. I am going to tell you the truth--though you haven't told it to me. There is no use in your not facing it, man. Aura doesn't by right belong to you--she belongs to me. If I'd known then--when I was at Cwnfairnog, I mean--what I know now, I--I should have tried to take her away from all your cursed money-getting even then. It's different now ... if you make her happy. And if you don't--I--I won't be such a fool again! That's fair and square and above board. So--good-bye!"
As he walked through the streets once more, he felt that this was the last straw. Why had he not made her understand herself? Why had he not carried her off then and there to Avilion? Truly, he was cursed as a fool. He ought to have known, he ought to have guessed, he ought to have understood.
So, as he wandered aimlessly through the city, looking with a lack-lustre eye upon all its hideous sights and sounds, having in his ears the silly giggles of girls as they crowded round the shop windows, having in his eyes an endless procession in those windows, of hats and garments, and flowers and frocks, and fal-lals set there by men as a bait to the only barter which is allowed to womanhood without restraint, he told himself that he would have done right if he had carried her away from contamination to that island in the southern seas, where she would have lived to rear his children and be....
Ye Gods! What should she not have been?
For an instant he caught a glimpse of reality, and then the Dream of Life was his again; but though the Dancer of the World had on all the charms of money and civilisation and culture, her dancing did not hold his eyes.
That evening he went over to the hospital and found Helen, darning away busily at something which she hastily thrust into her work-basket as he came in. Vested interests, of course!
"I am going away, Helen," he said.
"Going away," she echoed. "Why, Ned! you have only just come back. My dear! I do wish you--you would settle down."