“You don’t understand,” her brother returned savagely.
“You don’t,” Brenda replied.
Jervaise snorted impatiently, but he had enough control of himself to avoid the snare of being drawn into a bickering match.
“It isn’t as if the decision rested with me,” he went on, looking down at the hearth-rug, but still, I fancy, addressing himself almost exclusively to Anne. “I can’t make my father and mother see things as you do. No one could. Why can’t you compromise?”
“Oh! How?” Brenda broke out with a fierce contempt.
“Agree to separate—for a time,” Jervaise said. “Let Banks go to Canada and start a farm or something, and afterwards you could join him without any open scandal.”
“Any mortal thing to save a scandal, of course,” Brenda commented scornfully.
“Would you be prepared to do that?” Jervaise asked, turning to Banks.
I thought Banks seemed a trifle irresolute, as though the bribe of finally possessing Brenda was tempting enough to outweigh any other consideration. But he looked at her before replying, and her contemptuous shake of the head was completely decisive. He could not question any determination of hers.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said.