So she steered a middle course, and said, "Often I am inclined to doubt"--she hesitated over her words. "You see, I am waiting for two ... There's my father, who seems to have vanished for ever.... I never hear from him either."
"And you feel yourself bound to him still?"
She felt the noose tightening about her neck.
"Answer me."
There was something in his tone that abolished every loophole of escape. She felt that it was a matter of life and death. She held up her arms as if taking a solemn oath.
"Since I have known you, I don't care one way or the other. If you wish me to be faithful to him, then I will wait for him ... till the crack of doom; if you would rather I threw him over, I will do that too."
He laid his head back and closed his eyes. He stood now exactly as he had done in the dark bit of the park. And she felt the same anxiety on his behalf. "Why will he torture himself so?" she thought. And it occurred to her for the first time that he was taking her and everything she said in earnest; that he, to whom loyalty was a law, expected loyalty from her in the natural course of things. Ah, how little he knew!
She was so deeply ashamed of herself that she dared not question or come near him.
He drew himself up with a powerful effort, and she saw the cloud of wrath on his brow that had awed her the first day of their acquaintance.
"Listen," he said. "After what you have been telling me, I see that I was on a wrong tack. You are not lonely and forsaken, the world has not sinned against you. On the contrary, you are protected and cared for, and have a future, however uncertain, to look forward to. You would lose all this through me. His friend would not, of course, continue his support if he heard anything about me. And it would be the same with the others, who at present constitute your world."