“Ah! Forgive me!” Gillian spoke with an accent of self-reproach. “I’d forgotten you still—care.”
“For Magda?” He laughed shortly. “No. That’s dead, thank God! I killed it. Worked it out of my system in ‘Frisco”—with exceeding bitterness. “Then I got the news of June’s death. Her sister wrote me. Told me she died because she’d no longer any wish to live. That sobered me-brought me back to my sense. There was a good deal more to the letter—my sister-in-law didn’t let me down lightly. I’ve had to pay for that summer at Stockleigh. And now Magda’s paying. . . . Well, that seems to square things somehow.”
“Oh, you are brutal!” broke out Gillian.
His eyes, hard as steel and as unyielding, met hers.
“Am I?”—indifferently. “Perhaps I am.”
This was a very different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan of former times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to understand, and yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not but condone it to a certain extent.
When at last she rose to go, he detained her a moment.
“I am remaining in England now. I should like to see you sometimes. May I?”
She hesitated. Then something that appealed in the tired eyes impelled her answer.
“If you wish,” she said gently.