"You want me to go?"
"Yes—yes!" She turned away, gesturing blindly in the direction of the door. The room seemed whirling round her. "I—I want you to go!"
Then she felt his hand on her shoulder and, yielding to its insistent pressure, she faced him again.
"Nan, is it because you've ceased to care that you tell me to go?" He spoke very quietly, but there was something in the tense, hard-held tones before which she blenched—a note of intolerable fear.
Her shaking hands went up to her face. It would be better if he thought that of her—better for him, at least. For her, nothing mattered any more.
"Don't ask me, Peter!" she gasped, sobbingly. "Don't ask me!"
Slowly his hand fell away from her shoulder.
"Then it's true? You don't care? Trenby has taken my place?"
A heavy silence dropped between them, broken only by the sullen roll of thunder. Nan shivered a little. Her face was still hidden in her hands. She was struggling with herself—trying to force from her lips the lie which would send the man's reeling faith in her crashing to earth and drive him from her for ever. She knew if he went from her like that, believing she had ceased to care, he would never come back again. He would wipe her out utterly from his thoughts—out of his heart. Henceforward she would be only a dead memory to him—the symbol of a shattered faith.
It was more than she could bear. She could not give up that—Peter's faith in her! It was all she had to cling to—to carry her through life.