"You mock me?" he said quickly—"think me insincere, unscrupulous?—Well, I dare say! But you have no right to mock me. Last year, again and again, you promised me guerdon. Now it has come to paying—and I claim!"
His low distinct voice in her ear had a magnetising effect upon her. She slowly turned her face to him, overcome by—yet fighting against—memory. If she had seen in him the smallest sign of reference to that scene she hated to think of, he would have probably lost this hold upon her on the spot. But his tact was perfect. She saw nothing but a look of dignity and friendship, which brought upon her with a rush all those tragic things they had shared and fought through, purifying things of pity and fear, which had so often seemed to her the atonement for, the washing away of that old baseness.
He saw her face tremble a little. Then she said proudly—
"I promised to be grateful. So I am."
"No, no!" he said, still in the same low tone. "You promised me a friend. Where is she?"
She made no answer. Her hands were hanging loosely over the water, and her eyes were fixed on the haze opposite, whence emerged the blocks of the great hospital and the twinkling points of innumerable lamps. But his gaze compelled her at last, and she turned back to him. He saw an expression half hostile, half moved, and pressed on before she could speak.
"Why do you bury yourself in that nursing life?" he said drily. "It is not the life for you; it does not fit you in the least."
"You test your friends!" she cried, her cheek flaming again at the provocative change of voice. "What possible right have you to that remark?"
"I know you, and I know the causes you want to serve. You can't serve them where you are. Nursing is not for you; you are wanted among your own class—among your equals—among the people who are changing and shaping England. It is absurd. You are masquerading."
She gave him a little sarcastic nod.