"You felt the evening wouldn't be complete without that—after 'Butterfly'?" he asked.
Barbara stood still, swaying slightly until he caught her wrist.
"I'm shutting my eyes and thinking of the past, the time when we were happy," she gasped. "I can't face the present."
"You can face it as philosophically as I can," he answered. "If love were stronger than vanity … I don't blame you. I only blame myself because I was fool enough to believe a woman's word, fool enough to think that, if I gave her everything, she might give me something in return; that, if I shewed her enough magnanimity, I might shame her into being magnanimous. I was hopelessly uneducated in those days."
Barbara held up her hands as though each word struck her in the face.
"D'you want to part like this?" she whispered. "Wouldn't you rather remember the times when I came to you and cried—and you made me happy? I came to you when I was ill; and you just kissed me or stroked my forehead, and I was better. And once or twice, when you were ill, I came to you and laid your head on my breast.… Wouldn't you rather remember that, darling?"
"If I could only forget it, I shouldn't regret so bitterly the day when we first met."
She swayed again and caught hold of the wooden standard of a porter's rest. There was still no taxi in sight; Eric felt her pulse and dived into his pocket for a flask. He had never before noticed the rest of its inscription in honour of R. A. Slaney, for twenty-six years Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury.…
"Take a sip of this," he ordered.
She drank obediently and thanked him with her eyes.