"Jack——"
He flapped one hand at her with nervous impatience, drew furiously at his cigarette and looked away over the garden and house-tops to the shadowy Park.
"You mustn't put me off my stroke, Barbara.... These are the two big obstacles that all the world will see. Well, I can assure you that I shouldn't be talking to you like this, if you hadn't—in a way—given me the right to.... At first I couldn't stand you at any price whatsoever. Then there was a night when I said to myself that I should have to be careful. It was when you rang me up and invited me to dine with you alone—after that business in Webster's rooms. At first I was perfectly furious; you seemed to be taking that luckless girl's death so calmly and thinking only of the hole you were in. And then—I don't know; something changed. I began to feel sorry for you, I felt extraordinarily fond of you; I told myself that I should have to watch out. Then—something you said—it was when you invited me to one of your own special parties at the Abbey; I got the feeling that you liked me, rather. Was I right?"
The question came so suddenly in the middle of his halting narrative that Barbara started. So far the scene was not developing at all as she had expected. She could interrupt, confuse, stop him; but there was no way of bringing in the open-eyed amazement which she had planned; he seemed to be putting the responsibility on her. And, when he brusquely told her not to interrupt, she felt strangely disposed to obey him.
"Was I right?" he repeated, turning to look at her.
The customary self-satisfied smile had disappeared, and he was frowning. Barbara chose to fancy that he must take on the same expression with a fighting case in court.
"Yes, I quite liked you," she answered. "I always liked you, when you're not trying to shew me that everything I say and do——"
He cut her short with a quick uplift of one finger.
"Good! Well, when you shewed me that, I took stock and began to look at things from another point of view. I suggested to you—as fairly and fully as I could—the chief obstacles; money ... and so forth. If you—or your people, through you—had thought that insuperable, then there was nothing more to be said. I felt I must give you the opportunity of entering a caveat. I need hardly say that, knowing you as I did.... I mean, if you wanted to marry a man, you wouldn't mind if he were a beggar. Would you?"
The new question again startled her by its abruptness. She had a misgiving that he was pressing her into a corner.