She made no further remark, but sat clasping and unclasping her nervous hands, as powerless against the desperate languor assailing her as she had been against the gust of passion.
Across the wide, smiling land westward a closed shadow, sharp of outline and rapid of flight, drove across the stubble field, sank in an intervening valley, and skimmed again over the close green turf to their feet as it touched the edge of the chalk pit. She shivered a little.
“Take me home, Christopher.”
He helped her up and with steady hands assisted her to smooth her hair and put on her hat, and then they turned and walked back along the path they had come. Christopher was greatly troubled. It seemed to 275 him incredible that Geoffry had been left in ignorance of this cruel inheritance. He tried to gauge the effect of it on his apparently unsuspecting mind and was uneasy and dissatisfied over the result.
“Someone must explain to Geoffry,” he said presently; “will you like him to come over to-night and tell him yourself, Patricia?”
“I don’t want to see him.” There was a deep note of fatigue in her voice, also a new accent of indifference. Her mind was in no way occupied with her lover’s attitude towards the unhappy episode.
“Someone’s got to see him and explain. It’s only fair,” persisted Christopher resolutely.
“What is there to explain. What does it matter?”
“He thinks it was an accident.”
She walked on a little quicker.