He perceived that the man was moving through his thoughts as a dark man, short and suave, and he wondered how the fancy had arisen. Vaguely he began to wonder what he had been like indeed. It was too soon to question who he was—he wondered only how he looked, in a dim mental searching for the presence to associate her with. Next, the impression vanished, and sudden recollections came to him of men he was accustomed to meet.
The manner and mien of these riveted his attention. It was not by his own will that he considered them; the personalities were insistent. He did not suppose that any one of them had been her lover; he knew that it was chimerical to view any one of them as such; but his brain had been groping for a man, and these familiar men obtruded themselves vividly. The lurking horror of her defilement materialised, so that the sweat burst out on him; the significance of what he had heard flared red upon his vision. To think that it had pleased her to lend herself for the toy of a man's leisure, that some man had been free to make her the boast of his conceit, twisted his heart-strings.
The solidity of the hospital confronted him on the slope that he had begun to mount. Beneath him stretched the herbage of cottage gardens somnolent in Sabbath calm. Out of the silence came the quick yapping of a shop-boy's dog, the shrillness of a shop-boy's whistle. They were the only sounds. Then he went in.
That evening Miss Brettan told Mrs. Kincaid that she wished to leave her.
The old lady received the announcement without any mark of surprise.
"You know your own mind best," she said meditatively; "but I'm sorry you are going—very sorry."
"Yes," said Mary; "I must go. I'm sorry too, but I can't help myself. I——"
"I used to think you'd stop with me always; we got on so well together."
"You've been more than kind to me from the very first day; I shall never forget how kind you have been! If it were only possible. But it isn't; I——"
Once more the pronoun as the stumbling-block on delicate ground.