"I will tell you, there is no question of insisting. I should have told you anyhow; but not here"—glancing nervously round the dropped curtains—"not now!"
"Why not here? Why not now?"
Her face quivers.
"I could not," she says piteously. "I do not quite know how I shall get through telling it; it must be somewhere—somewhere where it will not matter if I do break down!"
He stares at her in an unfeigned bewilderment, again slightly streaked with wrath.
"Have you gone mad, Amelia? or are you taking a leaf out of Sybilla's book? If you do not clear up this extraordinary mystification at once, I shall be compelled to believe either the one or the other."
Again her face contracts with pain.
"Oh, if it were only a mystification!" she says, with a low cry. "I cannot tell you here; it is physically impossible to me. But do not be afraid"—with an accent of bitterness, which he is quite at a loss to account for—"you shall not have long to wait; I will tell you, without fail, to-morrow; to-morrow morning, if you like. Come as early as you please, I shall be ready to tell you; and now would you mind leaving me? I want to have a few moments to myself before I see anybody—before I see Mrs. Byng; will you please leave me?"
It is so apparent that she is in deadly earnest, and resolute to have her request complied with, that he can do nothing but step dizzily down off the little daïs, feeling as if the world were turning round with him.
A quarter of an hour later he sees her leaving the party with Mrs. Byng, looking as simple, as collected, and not very perceptibly paler than usual.