"Yes." His heart beat.
"We may meet often—mayn't we?—at Lady Winterbourne's—or in the country? Couldn't we be friends? You don't know how often—" She turned away her weary head a moment—gathered strength to begin again—"—how often I have regretted—last year. I see now—that I behaved—more unkindly"—her voice was almost a whisper—"than I thought then. But it is all done with—couldn't we just be good friends—understand each other, perhaps, better than we ever did?"
She kept her eyes closed, shaken with alternate shame and daring.
As for him, he was seized with overpowering dumbness and chill. What was really in his mind was the Terrace—was Wharton's advancing figure. But her state—the moment—coerced him.
"We could not be anything but friends," he said gently, but with astonishing difficulty; and then could find nothing more to say. She knew his reserve, however, and would not this time be repelled.
She put out her hand.
"No!" she said, looking at it and withdrawing it with a shudder; "oh no!"
Then suddenly a passion of tears and trembling overcame her. She leant against the side of the cab, struggling in vain to regain her self-control, gasping incoherent things about the woman she had not been able to save. He tried to soothe and calm her, his own heart wrung. But she hardly heard him.
At last they turned into Maine Street, and she saw the gateway of
Brown's Buildings.
"Here we are," she said faintly, summoning all her will; "do you know you will have to help me across that court, and upstairs—then I shan't be any more trouble."