Chevenix felt very sick, and looked it. “The less you say about your promises, my good chap, the better I'll take it.” But Ingram by now had got back to his holier reminiscences:—
“I hunted for her high and low for three months—advertised, turned on detectives, I had even dared her friends' eyes and their cold shoulders—couldn't hear anything ... I was walking in hell for three months....
“Then, one day, I met her—in Chancery Lane. Of all squalid places on earth—there....”
“I'd been to my lawyer's, in Lincoln's Inn. I'd settled money on her—in case anything happened to me while I was abroad. I was going to travel, because I'd given it up. And then I met her. Chancery Lane!
“I was passing some school or another—Commercial Academy—book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting—that sort of place; a lot of ogling, giggling girls, and boys after 'em, came tumbling down the steps—all sun-bonnets and fluffy hair; and down the steps she came, too—Sanchia came—like a princess. She was in white, my dear man—as fresh and dainty as a rose, I remember. Daisies round a broad-brimmed straw: some books under her arm. The sun was on her, lit the gold in her hair. She looked neither right nor left, spoke to no one, had no one with her, or after her. She was never showy. You had to know her well to see how lovely she was. She never showed off well, and was always silent in company. Oh, but what a girl!
“When she saw me she flushed all over, and stood. She stood on the last step, and looked at me. Looked at me straight, as if she waited. I went directly to her, and took her hand. She let me. I couldn't speak sense. I said, 'You!' and she said, 'I knew I should see you like this.' It sounded all right. I never questioned it.” ... He stared, then broke out. “Good God, Bill! To think of her then—and to see her now! She won't look at me! I don't exist.” He plunged his face between his hands, and rocked himself about. Chevenix watched him without a word. Suddenly he lifted his pinched face, and complained bitterly.
“I can't understand it—I don't know what's changed her. Why, it's awful to make a chap suffer like this!” He stared about him. “Why, Bill,” he said, hushing down his voice, “is she going to drop me, d'you think—let me go to the devil?”
Chevenix rose and stood with his back to the fire. “I'll trouble you not to whine, Nevile; I've got something to say to all this tale of yours. I've got to ask you a thing or two. When you found her, now; and when you knew all that she'd gone through—a child like that! You brought her up here—hey?”
Without shifting his head to face his cross-examination, Ingram answered between his hands—“No, I didn't. She wouldn't budge from her school till she'd finished her course. I courted her for a month. It took me all that to make her listen to reason.”
“Reason!” Chevenix rated him. “You call it reason!”