Every word seemed to madden her.
"What--what could you know of the circumstances?" cried her choked, laboring voice. "It is unpardonable--an outrage! You know nothing either of him or of me."
She clasped her hands to her breast in a piteous, magnificent gesture, as though she were defending her lover and her love.
"I know that you have suffered much," he said, dropping his eyes before her, "but you would suffer infinitely more if--"
"If you had not interfered." Her veil had fallen over her face again. She flung it back in impatient despair. "Mr. Delafield, I can do without your anxieties."
"But not"--he spoke slowly--"without your own self-respect."
Julie's face trembled. She hid it in her hands.
"Go!" she said. "Go!"
He went to the farther end of the ship and stood there motionless, looking towards the land but seeing nothing. On all sides the darkness was lifting, and in the distance there gleamed already the whiteness that was Dover. His whole being was shaken with that experience which comes so rarely to cumbered and superficial men--the intimate wrestle of one personality with another. It seemed to him he was not worthy of it.
After some little time, when only a quarter of an hour lay between the ship and Dover pier, he went back to Julie.