"We didn't have lunch," Meg exclaimed with a sob. "At least, I didn't ... it was the lunch that did it."
"Did what?"
"Made me realise what I had done, and go away."
"Meg dear," said Anthony, striving desperately to keep his voice steady, "was it a very bad lunch?"
"I don't know," she answered with the utmost seriousness. "We hadn't begun; we were just going to, when I noticed his hands, and his nails were dirty, and they looked horrid, and suddenly it came over me that if I stayed ... those hands...."
She let go of the table, put her elbows upon it and hid her face in her hands.
Anthony made no sound, and presently, still with hidden face, she went on again:
"And in that minute I saw what I was doing, and that I could never be the same again, and I remembered my poor little dyspeptic Papa, and my dear, dear brothers so far away in India ... and you and Jan and Fay—all the special people I pray for every single night and morning—and I felt that if I didn't get away that minute I should die...."
"And how did you get away?"
"It was quite simple. There was something wrong with the car (that's how he got his hands so dirty), and he'd sent for a mechanic, and just as we were sitting down to lunch, the waiter said the motor-man had come ... and he went out to the garage to speak to him...."