“Because I’ve known him for a great many years—very well.”
There was the faintest trace of bitterness in Anne’s tone. The sight of the miserable bowed figure had revived some of her resentment.
With a quick movement, Madge left her chair, and knelt beside her, hiding her face, with a childish gesture, while Anne’s arm went round her as tenderly as a mother’s.
“I’m going to tell you everything,” she began in a half-choked voice. “I’ve been so wicked, Miss Page, that I—I can’t believe it. Every now and then I think it’s a dream.” She shivered in Anne’s grasp, and sobbed a moment.
“It was my fault. I thought I was so bored. I thought I was tired of Harry—of Harry who has always been a thousand times too good for me. And so I—I flirted with with him. Helen Didier says I threw myself at his head. She’s a hateful woman, and I loathe her, but that’s true, I did. He never cared for me. In my heart I knew he didn’t, even when I led him on to make love to me. It was nothing but my wretched wicked vanity. Just because I was bored. Just because——” Her voice sank, and for a moment Anne heard nothing but the painful catching of her breath in exhausted sobs.
“And the awful part was,” she stammered at last, “that I didn’t care either. I never meant it to be more than a flirtation. At least I think I didn’t,” she added with a pitiful attempt at perfect honesty. “But——” She stopped short.
“But it became more than that. He was your lover?”
She nodded her head, and then suddenly clasped Anne with convulsive strength.
“And Harry’s coming to-morrow. And I’m a vile woman!”
She cried the words aloud in a panic of horror.