“It hurt me more than you’ll ever know.” There was a sort of self-satisfaction in his voice. “It took me a long time to forget you, Lallie, and then, just as I was beginning, I saw you at the theatre––in the stalls ... with Mellowes.” His brows met above his handsome eyes. “Mellowes wasn’t long picking you up,” he added jealously.
Her lip quivered, but she did not raise her eyes.
“You saw me, too, didn’t you?” he persisted. “I know you did, because Mellowes came round afterwards and cursed me to all eternity.” He laughed. “I should have made a point of seeing you the next day if it hadn’t been for his confounded interference,” he went on. “He told me to get out of London and leave you alone.” He bent towards her a little. “What is Mellowes to you?” he asked her deliberately.
She raised her eyes now, and somehow it seemed as if, in the last few moments, the man she had known and loved had changed into a stranger––some one whom she had never seen before, whom she hoped never to see again.
She forced her lips to smile; she felt at that moment she would die rather than let him see how she was suffering, or guess how she had suffered in the past.
“He’s been kind to me,” she said voicelessly. “That’s all.”
Raymond made a little, inarticulate sound.
“He’s got me to thank for ever getting to know you,” he said. “I gave him your address and asked him to take you out a bit if he fancied it.... I asked him to be kind to you.”
The hands in her lap twitched convulsively.
“If I’d had one tenth of his beastly money,” Raymond said then savagely, “we shouldn’t be sitting here now as if we were strangers––as if ... Lallie––do you remember the good time we used to have–––”