Her shyness disturbed him....
“You needn’t explain that,” he said quickly. “One’s always afraid, somehow....”
He nervously waited for her to speak; and he was puzzled, faintly irritated, by her silence, for he wanted her just to tell him that she didn’t now want him to believe that she was a “perfect little cad.” But, after a while, she only said, dimly:—
“Now that I’ve told you why I asked you to come, I’d like you to tell me why you did come, please. It’s a very leading question, isn’t it?”
“Well ...” he said, and he stirred in his chair.
“I was lonely,” he said. “And I thought that maybe you were lonely too. I just thought it. And, Virginia,” he earnestly leaned towards her a little, “I’m so glad you’ve told me about your personal beast, indeed I am! But are you quite, quite sure that it’s such a personal beast as all that—that it isn’t just your, well, distaste of your present life that you have somehow personified?”
“Oh, no!” It was a cry.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I thought we might help each other somehow.... One has these brilliant ideas....”
“Was it an impertinence to come in that spirit, I wonder?” he asked suddenly.
She stared at him; and faint memories stirred in her of those very young days round about Mont Agel and the Hallidays, when she had been so impatient of this man’s “rightness,” his bursts of defensive formality. She stared at him. And realised with a start that he was speaking.