Thank God! Thank God that he had mastered the temptation, the passion of just now! It had gone utterly. Yet he felt a great tenderness, a great love for the little maid who would have given herself as she had given her love to him.
And now Scarsdale was talking, exerting himself to talk in his low, deep, strong, man's voice. He was trying to win this other man's liking and friendship, for he had an object in view. On Monday, at the latest Tuesday, this little house party would break up, they would all go their separate ways and he wanted to stay, as a few hours ago realising defeat and failure, he had wanted to go. Now with a new hope in his breast he wished to remain.
What they talked of mattered little, of everyday things, of commonplaces, but Scarsdale worked steadily towards the object he had in view.
"After ten years—I went away a mere boy, I knew but a few people, my father, who is dead since then, others who have passed out of my life. I come back to England a stranger among strangers. To me London is a desert, I walk its streets, looking vainly for a familiar face; I know no one, no one who passes knows me!"
"But you found Lord Gowerhurst?"
"Yes, he remembered me——"
"You and he were good friends?"
"No, as a boy I disliked him, may I say it to you?"
"But Kathleen and you were friends?"
"A—a boy and girl friendship—she has grown into a sweet and lovely woman—I shall think of this place, of her, of you and of your happiness, of the tranquil calm of this when I am back out there again—even when I am back in that London that I do not know and that knows me not!"