“What has happened between you and Paddy, Lawrence?” she asked, coming close up to him. “I thought everything was all right; that it was practically settled.” He clenched his hands suddenly.
“It is. Why?”
Gwen looked at him, and a wave of painful feeling passed over her face.
“She has run away,” she said; “she went back to London alone last night.”
Instantly, as in a flash, he understood. He did not speak, he did not utter a sound, but sat there in a silence that became terrible, his hands clenched and his mouth rigid. Gwen gave a little shiver.
At last to break the awful tension she continued:
“We called to see her this morning—Bob and I, and they told us she had crossed last night. They told us some sort of a tale about her uncle wanting her, but of course I didn’t believe it. I just pretended to, and then came back here feeling as if I’d had a shock.”
Still he did not speak nor move, only staring with that fixed gaze into vacancy. If there was any difference at all, he was grinding his teeth together, to hold in check some inner tumult, rising momentarily higher.
Gwen grew a little frightened. She had never seen him like this, never seen any man, in the first deadly throes of an anguish that was as life and death to him.
“What are you going to do, Lawrie?” she said. “Perhaps, she has not really run away from you.”