But she was also afraid. She guessed suddenly a great deal more than she could actually see; she felt the miserable years that he had been through, she felt his hatred of his own position, and she knew that he would not be likely to forgive the man who had brought all this to a climax.
They were all at such terribly close quarters. It would be easy enough to get away from that sort of incident if they all of them were, as she put it to herself, “spread out”; but halfterm was only just over and she did not know what the next six weeks might bring. Traill's feeling, she saw, was mainly one of disgust—the same kind of sensation that he would have had if he had not been able to have his bath in the morning. About Perrin he only felt contempt, a man who could make that kind of disturbance about so small a thing....
Traill's final opinion, in fact, about it all was that “it wasn't done” and that Perrin was therefore an “outsider,” and that there the thing ended.
Isabel, in the few words that he had time to say to her, saw all this and knew that his attitude would not make the whole affair any easier. But she was wise enough to leave it all where it was for the moment and simply to tell him that she was sorry.
“One thing, you know,” she said, smiling at him and blushing a little. “We must let them all know about us, at once, to-day.”
“Oh! must we?” he said, shrinking back a little.
“Why, of course. You don't suppose there isn't going to be talk about all this business. Of course, there is, heaps—and you must let me do my share of standing up for you. I must have the right, you know.”
He had not figured the talk that there would be—he saw it all now in an instant, that there would be sides and discussions, and, looking further still, he had some idea of all the issues that were to be involved; but he was much too simple a person to think this further vision anything but fantastic: people simply didn't fight to that extent about umbrellas....
He left her with a smiling consent to the announcement of their engagement, and, for the moment, the thought of that swallowed all the Perrin affair. He went down to his football cheerfully.