"She won't get the chance. It's my affair—not hers. There'd be arguments, at the very least. She tramples tactlessly. And it's plain you're abnormally sensitive; and rather fierce under your gentleness——!"
"But, Rose—I must speak. I refuse to treat—my mother as if she was—a family skeleton——"
"No—not that," she soothed him with voice and gesture. "Of course they shall know—later on. It's only ... I couldn't bear any jar at the start. You might, Roy—out of consideration for me. It would be quite simple. You need only say, just now, that your father is a widower. It isn't as if—she was alive——"
The words staggered him like a blow. With an incoherent exclamation, he swung round and walked quickly away from her towards the house, his blood tingling in a manner altogether different from last night. Had she not been a woman, he could have knocked her down.
Dismayed and startled, she hurried after him. "Roy, my dear—dearest," she called softly. But he did not heed.
She overtook him, however, and caught his arm with both hands, forcing him to stop.
"Darling—forgive me," she murmured, her face appealingly close to his. "I didn't mean—I was only trying to ease things for you, a little—you quiver-full of sensibilities."
He had been a fakir, past saving, could he have withstood her in that vein. Her nearness, her tenderness, revived the mood of sheer bewitchment, when he could think of nothing, desire nothing but her. She had a genius for inducing that mood in men; and Roy's virginal passion, once roused, was stronger than he knew. With his arms round her, his heart against hers, it was humanly impossible to wish her other than she was—other than his own.
Words failed. He simply clung to her, in a kind of dumb desperation to which she had not the key.
"To-morrow," he said at last, "I'll tell you more—show you her picture."