"I might have told you that before. But it was to have been our day—with no one between us—no one to demand reckoning. I cheated myself. I'm a rotten sentimentalist, dear—and I've ended by doing something mean and low, like a thorough-paced cad. I deserve to lose—all that I have lost."
She shook her head. Something of her old detachment, a little of her demure humour, tinged with satire, shone in her eyes.
"It's almost funny—your blaming yourself. I hunted you down—and I am going to marry Mr. Barclay."
He swung round on his heel, white to the lips.
"That man——!" he burst out.
"That woman——!" she retorted cynically.
He fought desperately for self-control.
"Anne is a good woman——"
"Is she? A better human being than Barclay? Have you started to lay down the standard of values like the rest of us?"
For an instant they confronted each other as antagonists, then he made a gesture of despair, of fierce self-loathing.