When the words had left her lips their brutality appalled her. She had hurt Dick as she had hurt Archie. If only he had not forced her to speak out.
Her calm impressed his optimism. He dropped his rifle, which clanged against the hidden masonry.
'Good God!' he said, 'do you mean it?'
She nodded her head wearily.
'You've told Sinclair you'd chuck me? Damn it, Norah...' and his disappointment found vent in anger and in abuse of Archie.
Norah saw she must stop him. Their short romance had been disastrous: it need not be made ugly.
'Don't,' she cried, 'don't spoil it now. Leave it so that one day we can look back without distaste. Part has been good. Don't throw that away.' He opened his mouth to answer.
'Murder's better done in silence,' she said, and walked a few steps away.
Dick's affection for Norah was real and shamed him into the silence she begged. After a moment—'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I was a brute. But it's such a shock.' Then coaxing her: 'Norah, say you don't mean it, say it's all a nightmare.'
She sat down on a pile of rubble overgrown with creepers. He knelt beside her and slipped his arm round her body.