The tale of their years for that instant reversed, he looked back at her with the eyes of a hurt and bewildered child. Shaded them with his hand against the pain as he replied:
"You know that is neither fair nor true."
"I no longer know what is true," said Ferlie.
Half beside himself with the sight of her thus altered, he caught her wrists and held them.
"Because you have formed a new and all-absorbing tie for the future, is it necessary to mock at that older discarded friendship which stretches out a hand to you from the past?"
A slow flush crept up her face and the grey eyes widened on a look of anger and intense pain.
"Mock? No, Cyprian, I am not Muriel Vane—kind to men in order to be cruel. If I seem to indulge in that particular vein of cruelty, it is because I know of no other way to be kind ... now."
He saw the thin gleam of a gold chain which lost itself in the folds of transparent softness near her throat, and was superseded by a visible string of pearls—"the gift of the Bridegroom."
Then she wrenched herself away and left him there, staring uncomprehendingly at the goldfish going round and round.