"And you"--her voice, as she lay motionless in his arms, was almost inaudible--"you think I'm worth fighting for?"
"More than anything in the world. But I wish"--a little he, too, faltered, his fears for her sake making him afraid--"I wish that people didn't hurt you so."
She stirred in his arms; and her face upturned to his.
"Man," she said, her eyes shining, "I'm not afraid of anything people can do to me. Nobody except you could ever really hurt me. I--I didn't mean to desert; only just to efface myself. Won't you let me efface myself? Until--until Hector divorces me. It's the right thing--the best thing. Really it is."
"Right or wrong," said Ronnie, "we'll see this business through--see it through together--even if it lasts all our lives."
Aliette, seeing the fighting-fire in those blue eyes, seeing the stubborn set of that protruded jaw, knew her momentary determination beaten to the ground.
CHAPTER XVIII
1
Within one week of its first launching, "Khorassan" sank, leaving hardly a ripple, into the deep pool of theatrical failures. But for weeks and weeks thereafter, that shallow pool which is West End society rippled furiously to the stone which Julia Cavendish had thrown into it when she attended Patrick O'Riordan's first-night accompanied by her son and Aliette.