With a quick, sharp indrawing of her breath as of one in sudden pain, she rose to her feet and drew her hand away.
"Oh, why did you do that?" she cried out.
"Because," he said, "I love—"
"No, no!" she cried out again. "Don't answer me! I didn't mean that you should answer. It is only that now there is something else that I must say. I—I—" Her voice broke suddenly.
"Don't!" he said huskily. "Polly, there is nothing to take to heart. What could it ever matter, those days? They are gone now forever. You exaggerate any possible bearing they could have on to-day. Suppose you were a flower girl, that you have known poverty in its bitterest sense—would that matter, could it possibly matter to any one who was not a contemptible snob, or to—"
"There is something else now that I must say." She was repeating her own words, almost as though she were unconscious of any interruption. "You—you make me say it. I—I never knew who my father was."
She was gone.
He had had a glimpse of a face pitifully white, of dark eyes that fought bravely against a mist that sought to blind them; and then before he could move or speak she had run from the room—and he stood alone before the fireplace.
And in the fireplace the last log fell spluttering, throwing out its dying rain of little sparks, and lay a broken thing between the dogs.