But now Joan was determined to face the worst, to learn her position and know what she must do.
“Has the day not come yet, Cosmo?” she said. “Cannot you now tell me why you left me so suddenly?”
“It may come with your answer to the question I put to you,” replied Cosmo.
“You are cruel, Cosmo!”
“Am I? How? I do not understand.”
This was worse and worse, and Joan grew rather more than almost angry. It is so horrid when the man you love will be stupid! She turned her face away, and was silent. A man must sometimes take his life in his hand, and at the risk of even unpardonable presumption, suppose a thing yielded, that he may know whether it be or not. But Cosmo was something of the innocent Aggie took him for.
“Joan, I don’t see how I am wrong, after the permission you gave me,” persisted he, too modest. “Agnes would have answered me straight out.”
He forgot.
“How do you know that? What have you ever asked her?”
Joan, for one who refused an answer, was tolerably exacting in her questions. And as she spoke she moved involuntarily a step farther from him.