“Does Sydney know where you are now?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, “not yet. But I am going to write to her to-night.”
When they had reached the house where she had taken rooms, Mr Thurston held out his hand in farewell.
“Won’t you come in, Gerald?” Eugenia asked.
“No, thank you. I have letters to write, and the post leaves early. You must take care your letter is in time.”
“Yes,” she answered, absently, adding, “If you won’t come in to-night, will you come and see me to-morrow? I—I will try to think of what you have said, if it is not too late.”
“Then you don’t think me hard and cruel?” he said, gently.
“No, oh no. I only thought you could not understand.”
“This much I understand,” he replied. “You have suffered a great deal, where many women would have suffered little. It is your nature to, do so. Therefore, I dread for you, with unspeakable intensity, the deeper suffering you would bring upon yourself—most of all the knowledge, which, sooner or later must come to you that you had done wrong, grievously wrong—for it is not a case where duty is difficult of recognition.”
She did not answer, but sometimes silence is better than words. She went upstairs to the neat, bare, unhomelike lodging-house drawing-room, and sat down to think. She thought and thought so long and so deeply, that poor Rachel knocked several times before she was heard, and, unfortunately, it was past post-time! So no letter reached Wareborough the next morning.