"I will," he said. "Thank you."
He was still staring at her, and she knew that he had something further to say. She could see it struggling in his eyes. But she did not want him to confess any more. He would be the kind of man to regret afterwards what he had done. She would not burden his conscience. And yet she had the knowledge that it was something very serious that he wanted to tell her, something that had been, in reality, at the back of all his earlier confession.
She refused the appeal in his eyes, said good-night, took his hand for a moment and turned away.
Afterwards she was talking to Katherine Mark.
"I see you were kind to poor Mr. Lapsley," Katherine said.
"How sad about his wife!" Lizzie answered.
"Yes. And she really was young and beautiful. No one understood why she married him, but I've never seen anything more successful.... I didn't think he'd come to-night, but I'm fond of him. Philip doesn't care for him much, but he reminds me of a cousin of ours, John Trenchard, who was killed in Russia in the second year of the war. But John was unhappier than Mr. Lapsley. He never had his perfect years."
"Yes, that's something," Lizzie acknowledged.
It was strange to her afterwards that Edmund Lapsley should persist so vividly in her mind. She saw him with absolute clarity almost as though he were with her in her flat. She thought of him a good deal. He needed someone to comfort him, and she needed someone to comfort. She hoped he would come and see her.
He did come, one afternoon, quite unexpectedly and without telephoning first. Fortunately she was there, alone, and wanting someone to talk to. At first he was shy and self-conscious. They talked stiffly about London, and the weather, and the approaching Peace, and whether there would ever be a League of Nations, and how high prices were, and how impossible it was to get servants and when they got them they went.... Lizzie broke ruthlessly in upon this. "It isn't the least little good, Mr. Lapsley," she said, "our talking like this. It's mere waste of time. We both know plenty of people to whom we can chatter this nonsense. Either we are friends, or we are not. If we are friends, we must go a little further. Are we friends?"