"Insult is a hard word, Lady Kitty. I regret that poem."
She swept forward in silence, but he still stood in the way.
"I wrote it—almost in delirium. Ah, well"—he shook his head impatiently—"if you don't believe me, let it be. I am not the man I was. The perspective of things is altered for me." His voice fell. "Women and children in their blood—heroic trust—and brute hate—the stars for candles—the high peaks for friends—those things have come between me and the past. But you are right; we had better not talk any more. I hear old Federigo coming up the stairs. Good-night, Lady Kitty—good-night!"
He opened the door. She passed him, and, to her own intense annoyance, a bunch of pale roses she carried at her belt brushed against the doorway, so that one broke and fell. She turned to pick it up, but it was already in Cliffe's hand. She held out hers, threateningly.
"I think not." He put it in his pocket. "Here is Federigo. Good-night."
It was quite dark when Kitty reached home. She groped her way up-stairs and opened the door of the salon. So weary was she that she dropped into the first chair, not seeing at first that any one was in the room. Then she caught sight of a brown-paper parcel, apparently just unfastened, on the table, and within it three books, of similar shape and size. A movement startled her.
"William!"
Ashe rose slowly from the deep chair in which he had been sitting. His aspect seemed to her terrified eyes utterly and wholly changed. In his hand he held a book like those on the table, and a paper-cutter. His face expressed the remote abstraction of a man who has been wrestling his way through some hard contest of the mind.
She ran to him. She wound her arms round him.
"William, William! I didn't mean any harm! I didn't! Oh, I have been so miserable! I tried to stop it—I did all I could. I have hardly slept at all—since we talked—you remember? Oh, William, look at me! Don't be angry with me!"