I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair. “It is perfectly simple,” I smiled, “now that we have cool heads.”
“But IS it simple?” asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of being.
I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. “You see,” she said, “I like Willie. It’s hard to say what one feels—but I don’t want him to go away like that.”
“But then,” objected Verrall, “how———?”
“No,” said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly into one long straight line.
“It’s so difficult——— I’ve never before in all my life tried to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I’ve not treated Willie properly. He—he counted on me. I know he did. I was his hope. I was a promised delight—something, something to crown life—better than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride. . . . He lived upon me. I knew—when we two began to meet together, you and I——— It was a sort of treachery to him———”
“Treachery!” I said. “You were only feeling your way through all these perplexities.”
“You thought it treachery.”
“I don’t now.”
“I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me.”