And then Peter came in, and Sandy hastened to make himself scarce.
A dead silence followed his hurried exit. Nan found herself trembling, and for a moment she dared not lift her eyes to Peter's face for fear of what she might read there. At last:
"Peter," she said, without looking at him. "Are you still—angry with me?"
"What makes you think I am angry?"
She looked up at that, then shrank back from the bitter hardness in his face almost as though he had dealt her a blow.
"Oh, you are—you are!" she cried tremulously.
"Don't you think most men would be in the same circumstances?"
"I don't understand," she said very low.
"No? I suppose you wouldn't," he replied. "You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word—faithfulness. Perhaps you can't help it—you're half a Varincourt! . . . Don't you realise what you've done? You've torn down our love and soiled it—made it nothing! I believed in you as I believed in God. . . . And then you run away with Maryon Rooke! One man or another—apparently it's all the same to you."
She rose and drew rather timidly towards him.