'It wasn't because you thought you might...' His voice trailed away.
She understood what he wanted to ask, and sorrowfully shook her head. She dared not start into a labyrinth of deception through which her feet would have to drag every day of her life.
Archie's eyes, which had been alive with incredulous hope, died. He sat down heavily on the stump, no longer sustained by any aspiration, hope as dead and dry as bones in the sand.
'I had to tell you,' Norah murmured.
He nodded.
'Don't let's talk of it any more,' he said; 'we needn't settle anything yet.'
For once he felt he must talk; the sound of his voice was preferable to the bottomless vacancy of his heart.
'We've got to get out of here first. Then I dare say you'll like to be taken back to England. Then we can see.'
In his disappointment he clutched at her offer of reconciliation. It was something to know that she was not a total loss to him. He had, it seemed, only to say the word and she would come back into his life. If he did not set his demands on happiness too high something might be saved out of the wreck.
Norah had been watching his face. Her heart had ached for him as she saw the re-birth of hope and its deception. She had been tempted to foster it; but why treat him like a child when his manliness made him so admirable? She had lost confidence in herself and felt she blundered in a dark room, bruising and crushing against her will.