"I built up a dream about you two years ago," Dick went on. "You don't remember anything about me; but our meeting, your face as you stood that day with your back to the wall, were stamped on my heart as with a branding-iron. Of all the foolish things that a man could do perhaps I chose the worst; for ever as I stood and watched you the shadow of shame grew up beside you, and other people turned away from you. But I thought I saw further than the rest; I imagined that I had seen through your eyes, because already I loved them, into your soul. There is some mistake here, I argued, some mystery which she herself shall one day make clear to me." Joan had lifted her head and was staring at him. "From that day I started building my dream. I went abroad, but the memory of your face went with me; I used to make love to other women, but it was because I looked for you in their eyes. Then I came home and I saw you again. Suddenly my dream crystallized into clear, unshakable fact; I loved, I had always loved you; nothing that other people could say against you would have any effect. It lay just with you, and to-day you have given me your answer and broken with your own hand the dream."
He turned towards the door; Joan staggered to her feet and ran to him. The vague memory in her mind had leapt to life; his eyes had often reminded her of someone. She remembered now that he was the young doctor that Aunt Janet had sent for. She remembered her own defiance as she had faced him and the pity in his eyes.
"Dick," she whispered, "Dick, I didn't know, I didn't understand. I thought—oh, don't go away and leave me just like this, I might explain." Her torrent of words broke down before the look on his face; she fell to her knees, clutching at his hands. "Won't you listen? It was because I was afraid to tell you; I was afraid, afraid."
Her position, the paroxysm of tears which, once they came, she could in no way stop, disquieted him. He shook her hands from him. "And because you were afraid," he said stiffly, "I suppose you had the other man here to protect you." Then his mood changed.
"Whatever you have done," he said, "it isn't any business of mine. Please forgive me for ranting like a schoolmaster, and please don't cry like that. While I sat there watching that other man and feeling that everything my heart had been set on was falling to pieces all round me, I wanted to hurt you back again. It's a pugnacious sensation that one gets sometimes, but it's gone now; I don't want you to be hurt. It was not your fault that I lifted you up in my heart like that; it is not altogether your fault that you have fallen. Perhaps you did not know how cruel you were being when you had that other man here to make clear to me something you did not wish to put into words yourself. I have said some beastly things to you, and I am sorry for them. Please don't let them worry you for long."
Then he had gone, before she had time to speak or lift her hands to hold him. Gone, and as she crouched against the door the sound of his feet trod into her heart, each step a throb of agony.
Mrs. Carew was holding forth to Fanny in the hall as Dick swung past them. He did not glance at them even, and Fanny did not have a chance to call out to him, he went so rapidly, slamming the door behind him.
"Not as how they haven't left at seasonable hours," Mrs. Carew went rambling on; "but I 'as always said and always will say, I don't hold with such doings in my house."
"What doings?" Fanny expostulated. "For goodness, old Carew, do try and make yourself more clear; who has been carrying on and how?"
"Miss Rutherford," Mrs. Carew announced. She was viewing Fanny with unfriendly suspicion. "Only came back from this 'ere theatrical show yesterday, and to-day she has two men to tea with her in her bedroom."