“If you wish for me, call me up. I am at St. James’s Palace. But I don’t suppose you will have need of me. By the way, there’s one thing more I perhaps ought to ask you. Forgive me! Has there ever been anything in the nature of a threat from this fellow?”
“Oh, no!” she said. “No, no, no!”
She was swallowing sobs that suddenly began rising in her throat, sobs of utter shame and of stricken vanity.
“It’s all too horrible!” she thought.
For a moment she hated the straight-backed, soldierly old man who was standing before her. For he saw her in the dust, where no one ought ever to see her.
“He’s in love with me!” she said.
It was as if the words were forced out of her against her will. Directly she had said them she bitterly regretted them. They were the cry of her undying vanity that must try to put itself right, to stand up for itself at whatever cost. Directly she had spoken them she saw a slight twitch pull the left side of his face upward. It had upon her a moral effect. She felt it as his irresistible comment—a comment of the body, but coming from elsewhere—on her and her nature, and her recent association with Arabian. And suddenly her hatred died, and she longed to do something to establish herself in his regard, to gain his respect.
Already he was holding out his hand to her. She took his hand and held it tightly.
“Don’t think too badly of me,” she said imploringly. “I want you not to. Because I think you see clearly—you see people as they are. You saw Adela as she is. And perhaps no one else did. But you don’t know how fine she is—even you don’t. I had treated her badly. I had been unkind to her, very unkind. I had—I had been spiteful to her, and tried to harm her happiness. And yet she told me! I am sure no other woman would ever have done what she has done.”
“She had to do it,” he said gravely.