“But why didn’t you tell me that before? I could have gone another week. Now I’ve made Spence-Atkins cancel his own plans . . .”
“Oh, you’d better stick to your present arrangement,” she answered. Then, for some reason that I could not guess, she broke into wild weeping. “I’m so miserable! I’m mad! I don’t know what I’m saying! George, I’m sorry I was rude.”
“You weren’t rude,” I assured her.
“I’ve not slept for nights and nights,” she gasped. “You’ve been very patient with me. Go on being patient, go on loving me! I’m so miserable.” . . .
This time I determined to be a moral coward no longer:
“But why?”
“Oh, I’ve told you! Because I’m a damned soul. I told you that when you asked me to marry you.”
“And I told you that I’d make you happy or die in the attempt. There’s nothing I won’t do . . .”
In her first convulsion of grief, Barbara had allowed me to take her into my arms; but, as she became more composed, I felt her struggling gently to be free.
“You really mean that?,” she asked, with her head averted. “If it meant your honour, your life, your happiness, you’d give all that to see me happy?” I fancied again that she was challenging me and that, if I made unguarded reservations, I should be told that I did not love her as Jack Waring and Eric Lane had loved her. The second, as she believed, was paying with his life; the first had already paid with his soul. “I don’t know what I’m saying!” she cried, with her hands pressed to her temples. “I’m worried . . . No, I won’t see a doctor. You go off as you arranged. I’ll go to Croxton if I feel in the mood. When you come back, I may be all right; if not . . .”