But Joan rose. "I don't want it," she said. "Take me somewhere where we can talk." She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm. "Talk, my friend, for the last time. . . ."
"I'm damned if it is," he muttered between his clenched teeth.
She made no answer; and in silence he found two chairs in a secluded corner behind a screen.
"So you went down in the 'Connaught,' did you?" Her voice was quite calm.
"I did. Hence my silence."
"And would you have answered my first letter, had you received it?"
Vane thought for a moment before answering. "Perhaps," he said at length. "I wanted you to decide. . . . But," grimly, "I'd have answered the second before now if I'd had it. . . ."
"I wrote that in your rooms after I'd come up from Blandford," she remarked, with her eyes still fixed on him.
"So I gathered from Mrs. Green. . . . My dear, surely you must have known something had happened." He took one of her hands in his, and it lay there lifeless and inert.
"I thought you were being quixotic," she said. "Trying to do the right thing—And I was tired . . . my God! but I was tired." She swayed towards him, and in her eyes there was despair. "Why did you let me go, my man—why did you let me go?"