The woman dropped her arms as in defeat.
“Be good to us all!” she groaned. “It’s my fault.”
“I couldn’t help it,” he began weakly.
“Help it!” she snapped, with an instant change of temper. “I should hope not! Help human natur’? Who are you, to talk that way? Gunpowder’s gunpowder: it goes bang in the best settin’-room or out in the street. But this time ’twas my fault.”
“No,” said a voice behind them, “it was mine.”
They turned like conspirators taken in the fact, and with a mixed dismay; for the girl stood by the kitchen table, not only tranquil as a judge, but white as a victim. Her bearing was unchanged, her voice level; she had never seemed more beautiful, more necessary; and yet the very friendship in her eyes struck him like a blow.
“The other door was open,” she said, with the same mortal calmness. “At first I didn’t know you meant me. It’s my fault, Ella. But it’s easy to set right. I’ll go this morning.”
They both cried out against her.
“Go! Hark the nonsense!” Ella tried cheerfully to bluster. “We was jest talkin’! Go where?”
“It doesn’t matter where,” she answered steadily. “The main thing is to go. I did wrong to stay at all, but—I didn’t understand.”