“How dare you speak of Joyce like that? She was perfectly right, apart from my pledged word. If O’Brien plays the rebel, let him take the risk of rebels, without crawling into English houses for a hiding place!”
Susan paled.
“Et tu, Brute!” she said in a low voice.
She spoke a whispered word to Dennis O’Brien. He nodded, and buttoned up his trench coat.
“Yes, let’s be going.—Good-night, Pollard.”
Bertram did not answer.
He made no move, as he stood planted on the hearth-rug by the fire, staring moodily at a cigarette holder which Joyce had dropped, while his sister and her Irish husband went out of the room, and a moment later left the house, as he heard by the quiet click of the front door lock. He stood there for half an hour after they had left, and then summed up his thoughts in his usual sentence:
“It’s all very difficult!”
After that he went up to Joyce’s room, which was locked. There was no answer to his tap on the door, and he crept miserably to his own bed.