"I told them I had urgent, personal business."
"You told them a lie, then?"
(Steady. Steady. But it was too late. His only hope lay in her understanding—her pity.)
"It wasn't a lie. My friends are my business."
"Your friends!" he echoed.
There was silence between them. She was controlled enough not to answer. It would have been better if she had returned taunt for taunt so that at last in the white heat of conflict his prison might have melted and let him free. But there followed a cold, deadly interlude, in which their antagonism hardened itself with reason and bitterness. He went and stood by the window looking out on to the dim square. He said at last roughly, authoritatively:
"Don't go. I don't want you to go."
(If only he could have gone on—driven the words over his set lips—"because I'm afraid—because I'm at breaking-point—because I can't do without you. I'm frightened of life. I've been starved in body and heart too long. I'm frightened because Christine is hard to wake at night—because I can't work any more.")
"I've got to," she said briefly, sternly.
He walked from the window to the door.