So saying, he tore it across with a rancour that pierced her heart.
“You are most unkind!” she complained, following him in his great angry strides down the street, “and unnecessary. It is quite dark, no one could see me, or recognise me, and I do so want to talk to you. If you must take a hansom, choose one without a lamp. Egidia is away, for two days. I don’t know where she has gone. I felt I must see you, do you hear? It is a month since I have been in London—a month of agony.... Did you hail it?” she asked nervously, as a cab drew up along the kerbstone.
She put her hand appealingly on his arm.
“I won’t get in, unless you promise to come with me, so far. I must—I must talk to you.”
“You are behaving like a child.”
“I know I am,” she said, “only because you are behaving like a——”
What was she going to say? She did not know herself, only that a crushing sense of estrangement, of inevitableness, had come over her; the prop of an unacknowledged hope that had stayed her for so many weeks had been rudely withdrawn. The man she loved was a stranger; she had surely never lived at his side, day in, day out, through the summer that was past? A wave of despair overwhelmed her, black as the mud she looked down on, as she stood, her foot on the step, prepared to abandon her point, and go back alone.
But she had gained it.
“Anything sooner than a scene in the street!” she heard Rivers say wearily to himself, as he got in beside her.
“How cruel you are—how inconsiderate! Surely I have the right to a few words with you! I will never perhaps speak to you again in this world!”