“Did you drive her away?” asked Edward.
Lucy would not answer this. She would not say anything sincere or even hear anything sincere. She was afraid of nakedness.
“We were sorry to lose her ... in a way,” she said, fixing alarmed eyes on Edward. “But her health became so bad we could not press her to stay with us.”
“Did you drive her away?”
There was a bridge of hate between her eyes and Edward’s.
“Tam valued her services as secretary so much. He says he can hardly get on without her.”
She would not say anything real. She was like a martyr, steeped in an ecstasy of pretence, refusing to recant.
“Well, isn’t this astonishing,” said the exaggerated voice of Tam. “Wonder upon wonder. First a mouse eats a hole in my bedroom slippers and then we are invaded by Californians. All in one day. I forget your name—” (this to Edward) “—but I know I love you, as it were. As for you, Stone—ever find those rainbow pants?”
This was evidently a joke, but Stone did not laugh.
Edward was surprised that he remembered Tam so well. “I must have thought a great deal about him without knowing it.” Tam looked excited and unkempt. He had begun to grow a beard. The falling lock of hair across his low, nervously wrinkled forehead gave him a primitive and rather barbarous look.