She must "have it out" with James. That might be rather dreadful; it might take her where she must refuse to go—but on the whole, she didn't think it need. The certainty that she couldn't go to Norway, that James must be made to see it, was a moral buttress. Timidity of James would not prevail against it. Besides that, deeply within herself, lay the conviction that James was kind if you took him the right way. He was irritable, and very annoying when he was sarcastic; but he was good at heart. And it was odd, she thought, that directly she got into an awkward place with a flirtation, her first impulse was to go to James to get her out. In her dream she had called to him, though Urquhart had been there. Why was that?
She was thinking now like a child, which indeed she was where such matters were concerned. She was not really contrite for what she had done, neither regretted that she had done it, nor that it was done with. She wanted to discharge her bosom of perilous stuff. James would forgive her. He must not know, of course, what he was forgiving; but—yes, he would forgive her.
At six or thereabouts, listening for it, she heard the motor bring James home; she heard his latch-key, and the shutting of the door behind him. Her heart beat high, but she did not falter. He was reading a letter in the hall when she came downstairs; he was very much aware of her, but pretended not to be. She stood on the bottom stair looking at him with wide and fixed eyes; but he would not look up. He was not just then in a mood either to make advances or to receive them. His grievance was heavy upon him.
"James," said Lucy, "I've been listening for you."
"Too good," said he, and went on with his letter.
"I wanted to tell you that I don't think—that I don't much want to go to Norway."
Then he did look up, keenly, with a drawn appearance about his mouth, showing his teeth. "Eh?" he said. "Oh, absurd." He occupied himself with his letter, folding it for its envelope, while she watched him with a pale intensity which ought to have told him, and perhaps did tell him, what she was suffering.
"I don't think you should call me absurd," she said. "I was never very certain of it."
"But, my dearest child, you made me certain, at any rate," he told her. "You made everybody certain. So much so that I have the tickets in my pocket at this moment."