"You don't care. You care more for these two than you do for me. I've lived hard and clean. I don't lie or steal. I've never thought of any girl but you. And you put me second to a feckless thief and a——"
She stopped him. Not with a word or gesture, but with the sheer upward blaze of a chivalrous anger. And it was not only anger. That would have been bearable. It was sorrow, reproach, a kind of grieving bewilderment, as though he had changed before her eyes.
"You'd—you'd better go, Robert. We're both of us out of hand. We'll see each other to-morrow. It will be different then."
He went without a word. But on the dark stairs he stood still, leaning back against the wall, his wet face between his hands. He said aloud: "Oh, Francey. Francey, I can't live without you!" He would have gone back to tell her, but he was physically at the end of everything, and at the mercy of the power outside himself. He thought:
"There's still to-morrow. I'll tell her everything. I'll help her to get away. I'll make her understand that it wasn't Howard. To-morrow it will be all right."
And so went on. And the stolid Georgian door closed with a hard metallic click, setting its teeth against him.
"Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!"
5
But he came out of a night of fever and hallucination with very little left but the will to keep on. Apathy, like a thin protecting skin, had grown over him, shielding him from further hurt. He did not want to feel or care any more. The very memory of that "scene" with Francey made him shrink with a kind of physical disgust. Only no more of that. Back to work—back to reason. If she wished to go in pursuit of Howard and Gertie she would have to go. It seemed strange to him now that he should have minded so desperately.
Christine called to him as he passed her door.