'You understand,' she said slowly, 'that Miss Foster and I had become much attached to each other?'
'I understand.'
'That she had felt great sympathy for me in the failure of the book, and was inclined—well, you have proof of it!—to pity me, of course a great deal too much, for being a weakling. She is the most tender—the most loving creature that exists.'
'How does that explain why you should have fled from me like the plague?' he said doggedly.
'No—no—but—Anyway, you see Lucy was likely to do anything she could to please me. That's plain, isn't it?—so far?'
Her head dropped a little to one side, interrogatively.
He made no reply. He still stood in front of her, his eyes bent upon her, his hands in his pockets.
'Meanwhile'—the colour rushed over her face—'I had been, most innocently, an eavesdropper.'
'Ah!' he said, with a movement, 'that night? I imagined it.'
'You were not as cautious as you might have been—considering all the people about—and I heard.'