‘Doesn’t he? I say, did you ask us both to come—on purpose—that afternoon?—in the garden?’
She was silent.
‘It was bold of you!’ he said, in the same laughing tone. ‘But it’s answered. Unless, of course, I bore him to death. I talk a lot of nonsense—I can’t help it—and he bears it. And he says hard, horrid things, sometimes—and my blood boils—and I bear it. And I expect he wants to break off a hundred times a day—and so do I. Yet here we stay. And it’s you’—he raised his head deliberately—‘it’s you that are really at the bottom of it.’
Constance rose trembling from her chair.
‘Don’t say any more, dear Otto. I didn’t mean any harm. I—I was so sorry for you both.’
He laughed again.
‘You’ve got to marry him!’ he said triumphantly. ‘There!—you may go now—But you’ll come again soon. I know you will!’
She seemed to slip, to melt, out of the room. But he had a last vision of flushed cheeks, and half-reproachful eyes.
(To be continued.)
FOOTNOTES: