“Prejudice?”
“Against me? But I should not have asked you, I didn’t mean to do anything so imprudent, only that you are changed, and wonderfully pleasanter, and women never know when to let well alone. They want words to quiet them, and I want you to tell me with your own lips that you don’t dislike me any more.”
Again that momentary feeling of intoxication. He murmured almost inaudibly—
“I can’t.”
She slackened her steps.
“Why not?”
“Say that I don’t dislike you any more? Had I ever known you to dislike you?”
“No, no, but you had imagined me, and it was not a pretty picture you evolved. Tell me whether the picture still exists, or whether it is blotted out?”
Protestation was on his lips, when the recollection of Hugh’s misery rose up and checked him. She was still watching him, but now she turned away her face.
“It is not, I see,” she said quietly. Wareham clutched at a feverish memory.