He was confronting her now, looking straight down at her, and as he spoke the last words, all the concern and agitation, partly affected, partly real, with which her face had been moved, vanished before a set expression of unalterable resolution.
“For Julian’s sake,” she said, in a low, decisive voice, “it is impossible.”
He stood for a moment watching her, all the evil of his face standing out in intense relief, and then he made a slight, cold gesture of acquiescence.
“May I take you back into the large room?” he said.
She held out her hand to him with an eager gesture of apology and appeal.
“We are friends still?” she murmured. And the murmur was almost pathetically genuine in its anxiety. “It makes no difference?”
Loring’s mouth was not good to look at as he answered in a tone absolutely destitute of expression:
“Certainly not!”