She looked at me more kindly than she had done since the beginning.
“That’s just what I should have expected from what I knew of you, Mr. Flint. You think of him first and don’t bother about yourself. You aren’t selfish. I can’t understand you, somehow. You seem such a mixture; and until to-day I had no idea you were a mixture at all. It’s all so difficult.”
She ended with a choke in her voice and turned towards the car. I followed her and switched on the head-lights, ready to start. She climbed into her seat; and I put the rug around her knees. Just as I was on the point of starting, she spoke again.
“You’ve told me all I need to know; but I must hear it from Uncle Stanley himself. I’ll go on being his secretary. I’ll do all I can to help. But I hate you both. Yes, if this is true, I hate him too. What else do you expect? You look on yourselves as saviours, it seems. You may be that, but you certainly are murderers. You can’t even see why I abhor you both. That shows you the gulf between us. Oh, I hate you, I hate you, with this cold calculation of yours: so much food, so many lives. Is that the way to handle human destinies? Drive on.”
A little further down the road, she spoke again in a quivering voice which she strove to keep level and cold:
“This ends any work together. I couldn’t bear it in your case. With Uncle Stanley it’s different. I will go back to my old place with him. But I never want to see you again, Mr. Flint. I’ve lost two illusions to-day; and I don’t wish to be reminded of them more than I need be. I promised him that I would always help him; and I’m going to keep my promise, cost what it may. But I never promised you anything.”
For a few minutes I drove on in silence. The whole world seemed to have fallen around me. All that I had longed for, all my future, seemed to have collapsed in that short afternoon. I was not angry; I don’t think I was even completely conscious of what it all meant. I felt stunned by an unexpected blow. At last I roused myself.
“Elsa,” I said, “do you remember the first evening we met?”
She never moved.
“You sang that dirge from Cymbeline, you remember? When you’re calmer, I want you to think over it. I don’t want you to have any regrets. Mr. Nordenholt can’t last for ever under this strain. Think carefully.”