"But he will return with the cab. You can ask him not to say anything about it."
"Come, Dora," he said, with sudden and feverish energy, "let us go. I feel a horrible repugnance to this place."
"But the man with the cab? He will be here in a minute," she said, looking at him in pain and surprise. Surely he was selfish.
"No, no. Not a second. I feel as if I should faint again. There isn't a cab-rank within a mile, and he cannot be back for half-an-hour. Come, Dora."
She took his proffered arm with a view to giving, not receiving, aid, and he hurried her along Chetwynd Street until he met the first cross road leading north; into this he hastened, casting a quick glance behind, and finding to his great relief that he was not followed. After a couple of hundred yards he reduced the pace, and said: "I am afraid, Dora, I have been going too fast for you; but I would not wish for anything that my name should get into the newspapers in connection with this miserable affair and place. It would be bad enough to have a fellow's name connected with such a place as Chetwynd Street; but to have it published that a fellow fainted there because he saw a Nigger drop dead, would be against a fellow for life. It would be worse than an accusation of crime--it would make a man ridiculous."
"And I wonder," said the girl, looking up quietly at him, "how my name would look in print connected with this miserable affair and place, and that Negro and you?"
He stopped short, dropped her arm, and looked at her with an expression of alarm and apology. "Dora, Dora. I beg your pardon. I most sincerely beg your pardon. There is something wrong with me to-day. I never thought of that. You would not, Dora, be very much put out if you saw your name connected with mine in print? Our engagement is not public, but there is no reason it should not."
"Under these circumstances? I should most surely not like the publicity of the papers. But I did not think of that until you spoke of your own name."
He looked at her as she walked now slowly by his side. He felt cut to the quick, and the worst of it was he experienced no resentment, was not cheered and sustained by anger. He had allowed consideration for his own personal risk to swallow up all consideration for everyone else, Dora Ashton included. If a line of soldiers were drawn across this wretched street with levelled rifles, and his moving towards them would draw their fire into his breast, he would there and then have marched up to them rather than that harm should touch Dora.
It was in accordance with Dora's wishes the engagement between them had not been announced. She had views which in the main he shared and admired. She was intensely independent. Why should the world know they were pledged to one another? It was no affair of the world's. But to have her name bracketed with his in newspapers and then their engagement announced, would be hideous, unbearable to her.