He made a step nearer to her, looking down at her white face, averted from him. For her voice had been uncertain—unsteady—as if she were speaking against her will.
“Even if I am only that,” he said, suddenly grave, “Farlingford may still be a dream—Farlingford and—you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, in a quick, mechanical voice, as if she had reached a desired crisis at last and was prepared to act.
“Oh, I only mean what I have meant always,” he answered. “But I have been afraid—afraid. One hears, sometimes, of a woman who is generous enough to love a man who is a nobody—to think only of love. Sometimes—last voyage, when you used to sit where you are sitting now—I have thought that it might have been my extraordinary good fortune to meet such a woman.”
He waited for some word or sign, but she sat motionless.
“You understand,” he went on, “how contemptible must seem their talk of a heritage in France, when such a thought is in one’s mind, even if—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, hastily. “You were quite wrong. You were mistaken.”
“Mistaking in thinking you—”
“Yes,” she interrupted again. “You are quite mistaken, and I am very sorry, of course, that it should have happened.”
She was singularly collected, and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice. Barebone’s eyes gleamed suddenly; for she had aroused-perhaps purposely—a pride which must have accumulated in his blood through countless generations. She struck with no uncertain hand.