"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out." And, as she had done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him, blended with the scent of the meadow. Before Bulstrode the first reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea.
When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved. Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. Standing in front of her, he said slowly:
"I'm entirely free. No one in the world depends upon me. I have no tie, or bond to my life. I have freedom and money. So far—if what you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word—so far, I have spoiled your life."
But the girl shook her head.
"Oh, no, you haven't," she assured him. "We make our own lives, I expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said to me in the past—you never lied to me, and you were never anything but kind and dear. I've been a fool, a fool!"
Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had at last drifted along the shore to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what it would, he must save her.
But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder:
"You must go now: that is what I ask you to do. I have seemed, and indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't do any such thing. You will soon forget me, as you have been able to do all these years. The table is full of your money. I am poor, and yet I don't take it. Doesn't that prove a little my good faith? Doesn't it? Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever saw, and of nothing more. Oh, no," she breathed softly, "no, a thousand times...!
"I've answered your question before you've asked it! No, I couldn't; no woman who wants love is content with pity. I would rather starve than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years. I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love. You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. The temptation is very great, you know, and it might wreck me. No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason why I say it is because I've seen."
"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words. "You've seen, but what do you mean—what have you seen?"