"Then if your mind was so absolutely made up beforehand to refuse me, why was I sent for?" he stammered, white with anger. He struck the table with his hand. "What was the use of urging me to come back, if I was to meet with a frigid, elegantly expressed, deliberately planned rebuff directly I set foot in the house!"
"Why were you sent for?" she said aghast. "Surely you came of your own accord. Sent for! Who sent for you?"
She sat down feebly. A horrible suspicion turned her faint.
"Who sent for me?" he said venomously. "Why am I here?"
He tore some letters out of his pocket, and thrust them into her hands. Always sensitive to a slight, he was infuriated by the low cunning, the desire to humiliate him, with which he imagined he had been treated. Others could be humiliated as well as himself.
"Read them," he said savagely, and he walked away from her, and stood by the window with his back to her.
Magdalen read them slowly, the three letters, her father's, Aunt Mary's, Aunt Aggie's. Then she put them back into their envelopes and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
Humiliation, shame, despair, the anguish of wounded love, she saw them creep towards her. She saw them crouch like wild beasts ready to spring, their cruel eyes upon her. She had known their fangs once. Were they to rend her again?
She sat motionless and saw them pass, as behind bars, pass quite away. They could not reach her. They could not touch her.
She looked at the lover of her youth, standing as she had so often seen him stand at that window in years gone by, with his hands behind his back, looking out to the sea.