She had forgotten all else, indeed. She forgot too long. She did not know how long. It seemed that no more than a few minutes had passed before she was without warning struck with the shock of feeling that some one was in the room with her, standing near her, looking at her. She had been mad not to remember that exactly this thing would be sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she felt them—indecent—a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented even more than she resented his presence. He was too grossly ignorant to know that a man of breeding, having entered by chance, would have turned and gone away, professing not to have seen. He seemed to think—the dolt!—that he must make some apology.
“Say! Lady Joan!” he began. “I beg your pardon. I didn't want to butt in.”
“Then go away,” she commanded. “Instantly—instantly!”
She knew he must see that she spoke almost through her teeth in her effort to control her sobbing breath. But he made no move toward leaving her. He even drew nearer, looking at her in a sort of meditative, obstinate way.
“N-no,” he replied, deliberately. “I guess—I won't.”
“You won't?” Lady Joan repeated after him. “Then I will.”
He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm.
“No. Not on your life. You won't, either—if I can help it. And you're going to LET me help it.”
Almost any one but herself—any one, at least, who did not resent his very existence—would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence. “You're going to LET me,” he repeated.
She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm.