"Funny? If that's your idea of me, you had better marry Ralph Bevan."
"I almost think I had."
And she laughed again. Not Mrs. Levitt's laughter, gross with experience. He had borne that without much pain. Girl's laughter it was, young and innocent and pure, and ten times more cruel.
"You don't know," she said, "you don't know how funny you are," and left him.
Mr. Waddington took up the necklace and kissed it. He rubbed it against his cheek and kissed it. A slip of paper had fallen from the table to the floor. He knew what was written on it: "From Horatio Bysshe Waddington to his Little April Girl." He took it up and put it in his pocket. He took up the sketch-book.
"The little thing," he thought. "Now, if it hadn't been for her ridiculous jealousy of Elise—if it hadn't been for Fanny—if it hadn't been for the little thing's sweetness and goodness—" Her goodness. She was a saint. A saint. It was Barbara's virtue, not Barbara, that had repulsed him.
This was the only credible explanation of her behaviour, the only one he could bear to live with.
He opened the sketch-book.
It was Fanny, coming in that instant, who saved him from the worst.
When she had restored the sketch-book to its refuge in the bureau and locked it in, she turned to him.