She closed the magazine upon her hand and looked up at him.
“This isn’t quite fair of you, is it? I am in your house, and I can’t very well run away. Please let us not talk of you and me.”
There was no sympathy in her tone; she had spoken with quiet decision with the obvious intention of being rid of him.
“When I met you at the concert and walked to my sister’s that evening I thought we were understanding each other. Has anything that happened since changed the situation as we left it that day?”
“I wish you wouldn’t! Please do not! It is very unfair and unkind. You know perfectly well that I cannot discuss such a matter with you; and what difference does it make one way or another?”
“I have no claim on your mercy. I cannot explain anything. I want the right to earn your good opinion; that is what I am asking.”
“But why should you be asking? What difference does it make whether my opinion of you is good or bad? It is absurd the way we meet. Every meeting has been a little more unfortunate than the last—if for no other reason than that it has been another one! It is quite possible that I have lost your sister’s friendly interest by that walk home from the concert. You must have seen that she didn’t like it; and she was perfectly right not to like it. Nothing could have been more ill-advised and foolish than our going to her house together.”
“Oh, if it’s only Fanny! Fanny understands everything perfectly.”
“That isn’t very comforting, is it?” she asked with the least tinge of irony. She seemed more mature than he had thought her before, and she was purposely making conversation difficult. In a few minutes his father and Mrs. Craighill would return and he must make the most of his time. His tone was lower as he began again, on a new tack, and she listened with reluctant attention.
“When I met you I was well started to the bad and I had every intention of keeping on. I was going to do a particular thing and it was vile—it was the worst. Why is it that you are standing in the way of it? Oh, I know you don’t understand—if you did you wouldn’t let me speak to you; but it’s because you don’t understand—it’s because you couldn’t understand, that it’s so strange that you are blocking me. And not only that, but here you are in this house—this house that was my mother’s, and you bring her back to me as you sit there—just where she used to sit. The sight of you makes all these later years of my life hideous to me: I can’t do the thing I meant to—I see how foul it was; and I’m saying this to you now because I’m afraid of losing you—I’m afraid of your going away where you can’t help me any more.”