“Then do as I say. Take her to Brighton. She’ll go—give her supper in the public room at 10.30. Don’t look so blank, man. After all, it’s ten to one against, and the odds are with you.”
Quiltan hesitated. “It’s so extraordinary.”
“Quiltan! if you refuse to do this thing I’ll shoot you—by God! I believe I will.”
Quiltan rang the bell.
“I want the car,” he said—“immediately—and—and a suit case.”
VI
Eve scarcely spoke in the car as they drove over the long, undulating road to Brighton. When Quiltan came to the flat he found her with a queer hard light in her eyes. She nodded in a detached kind of way when he told her he knew. In the same detached way she listened to his half-scared, wholly genuine, protestations of love. She even allowed him to kiss her.
“I want you to come with me,” he had said—“to come away now.”
And with a fierceness which astonished him she had answered:
“Yes—yes— I don’t care—I will—will. Seems rather funny to me! All right. I’ve heaps of clothes—I’ll come—yes.”