And so she left him.
Lunch was nearly over when she got back. They had kept some hot for her; but she hardly touched it.
Briefly, without comment, she told them her news: and escaped with Keith into the study. To him she could speak more freely. He loved Mark like a brother; a good deal more, indeed, than the average brother: and she knew—though neither had spoken of it—that he had shared her distrust of Bel.
But her thoughts and her words were of Mark only as she stood beside the man who so intimately shared their lives, her small hand clenched upon the edge of the high mantelshelf; tears in her eyes; but none in her voice.
‘He faces trouble so exactly like his father,’ she said, when she had told him of Mark’s refusal to postpone the meeting. ‘But Richard’s phlegm went deeper. Mark, underneath, has all my terrible sensibility; though he won’t let me see it except accidentally.’
Keith said nothing. He was not given to superfluous comment; and on the whole she found his silences more satisfactory than other people’s talk. He knew she was more or less thinking aloud. She was not even looking at him, but at a full-length photograph of her husband—a powerful figure of a man.
‘It’s so strange,’ she went on in the same subdued tone. ‘I sometimes see Richard’s very self looking at me out of Mark’s eyes. When the look comes I seem actually to feel him there. Twice this morning I’ve seen it. Once when Mark spoke of war and again when he spoke of—that wretched girl. Oh Keith—I hate her!’
The low voice broke unmistakably; and she bowed her forehead on the back of her hand.
Macnair stood looking at her, his keen eyes clouded with tenderness. A moment he seemed to hesitate, then deliberately, he laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘Helen, don’t break your heart over it,’ he said. ‘We men pull through these things: and Mark is made of sterner stuff, if I know him, than to let a girl like Miss Alison smash him up for good. More likely to do that by marrying him than by leaving him. There’s a crumb of consolation for you!’
She raised her head now and smiled at him through tears that were not allowed to fall.