My arms were slipping round her waist.… But suddenly the thought of Gagin flashed like lightning before me. ‘What are we doing,’ I cried, abruptly moving back.… ‘Your brother … why, he knows everything.… He knows I am with you.’
Acia sank back on her chair.
‘Yes,’ I went on, getting up and walking to the other end of the room. ‘Your brother knows all about it.… I had to tell him.…’
‘You had to?’ she articulated thickly. She could not, it seemed, recover herself, and hardly understood me.
‘Yes, yes,’ I repeated with a sort of exasperation, ‘and it’s all your fault, your fault. What did you betray your secret for? Who forced you to tell your brother? He has been with me to-day, and told me what you said to him.’ I tried not to look at Acia, and kept walking with long strides up and down the room. ‘Now everything is over, everything.’
Acia tried to get up from her chair.
‘Stay,’ I cried, ‘stay, I implore you. You have to do with an honourable man—yes, an honourable man. But, in Heaven’s name, what upset you? Did you notice any change in me? But I could not hide my feelings from your brother when he came to me to-day.’
‘Why am I talking like this?’ I was thinking inwardly, and the idea that I was an immoral liar, that Gagin knew of our interview, that everything was spoilt, exposed—seemed buzzing persistently in my head.
‘I didn’t call my brother’—I heard a frightened whisper from Acia: ‘he came of himself.’
‘See what you have done,’ I persisted. ‘Now you want to go away.…’