He hesitated. Should he go on or should he draw back now while it was yet time, before the self-infliction of pain, before the visualizing of a shadow which meant nothing to them now, which was of the past, as other things had been in his own memory? All at once he stopped, aghast. Tears were in her eyes, and her hands were at her throat.
“Why do you do that?” he said abruptly.
“Because it will hurt you,” she said, shaking her head.
“Yes, yes—horribly!”
“What good does it do?” she said, shaking her head.
“None, none at all—I shan’t ask to know any more,” he said firmly, and he took up his pipe from the table where he had flung it and began to fill it, humming to himself.
She came and stood beside him until he was ready for a light. Then she struck a match and held it to him.
“Very becoming,” he said, with an effort, smiling at the sudden glow that suffused her soft face and gave points of fire to the depths of her eyes.
“I wish you understood me,” she said, with a wistful arching of her brows and a sudden downward slant of her eyes away from his.
“Wish I did!”