“Hold it, whatever it is, Thane,” John answered. “I can’t stop now. I just can’t.” He was pulling away.
“Won’t hold,” said Thane.
“It must,” said John. “I can’t stop. I’m sorry.” He liked Thane and was loath to leave him in a lurch. “Go to the hotel and wait for me there,” he said, pushing him off. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
With that he was going when the woman spoke.
“Are you looking for me?”
“Agnes!” said John to himself, as a declaration of preposterous fact. He wheeled around and stood stone still.
One instant before he had been mad with anxiety to hear her voice. Yet to the sound of it, so collected and sure, his emotional reaction was one of fierce anger. There was also a desolate world-wide sense of loss. Why he was angry or what was lost he could not have said in words. These feelings referred to her. Toward Thane there was a thought that seemed to rise behind him with purpose and power of its own; and he braced his back against it.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said, approaching her. “I found these.” He held out the handkerchief and scarf. She took them. “Then I went to the mansion ... and....” There he stopped.
“Yes. What did you learn there?” she asked.
His anger kept rising. How could she be so suave and frontal about it? He had actually the impulse to set hands upon her roughly and demand to know what she had been doing, how she came to be here alone on a dark road with an iron puddler and how she could pretend to be so unembarrassed.