It was this attitude of hers that first shook me in my conclusions. For
I'm afraid I'd come to certain very definite conclusions.
Why, I asked her, hadn't she told them before she came?
"Because," she said, "there's no use worrying them. They'd have tried to stop me. You can't imagine what an awful fuss they'd have made. I daresay I might never have got off at all."
What I couldn't understand was her attitude. I mean I couldn't reconcile the secrecy she had practised with her amazing frankness now.
Her manner was supremely assured.
It wasn't, mind you, the brazen assurance of a woman who has been found out and flings up the game; it was a curiously tranquil and patient candour, with something mysterious about it, as if she had knowledge that I couldn't have, and bore with me through all my ignorance and blundering. In fact, from beginning to end, except for the one moment when I upset her by telling her about Reggie's sailing, she showed an extraordinary tranquillity.
But as I couldn't understand her I simply said, "I wish you hadn't got off."
She said in that same quiet way, "I had to."
"Because," I said, "he made you."
Since she had dragged Jevons in she should have him in. I wasn't going to keep him out now to spare her. I had a right to know the truth. She had shaken my conclusions. She had left me in a doubt more unbearable than any certainty, and I considered that I had a right to know. I was determined to know now and end it. That shows that I must have trusted her; that I knew she wouldn't lie to me.