“No difference”
“None. Because, you see, this letter—asking me to go back to Magda—is written under a misapprehension.
“How? What do you mean?”
“I mean—that Magda has—no further use for me.”
Gillian leaned forward.
“You’re wrong,” she said tersely—“quite wrong.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not blaming her. Looking back, I’m not even very much surprised. But still, the fact remains, she has no further use for me.”
“Will you tell me what makes you think that?” With an effort Gillian forced herself to speak quietly and composedly.
He was silent a moment, staring out of the window at the gay blue sea beyond, sparkling in the morning sunlight. All at once he swung round on her, his face wrung with a sudden agony.
“I know,” he said in a roughened voice. “I know, because I wrote to her—six months ago. I was hard, I know, brutally hard to her that last day at Friars’ Holm. But—God! I paid for it afterwards! And I wrote to her—bared my very soul to her. . . . Wrote so that if she had ever cared she must at least have answered me.”