A loud knocking at the door interrupted them. Mary went to open it, and returning with some note or parcel, Katharine looked away so that Mary might not read her disappointment.
“Of course you had a right to come,” Mary repeated, laying the note upon the table.
“No,” said Katharine. “Except that when one’s desperate one has a sort of right. I am desperate. How do I know what’s happening to him now? He may do anything. He may wander about the streets all night. Anything may happen to him.”
She spoke with a self-abandonment that Mary had never seen in her.
“You know you exaggerate; you’re talking nonsense,” she said roughly.
“Mary, I must talk—I must tell you—”
“You needn’t tell me anything,” Mary interrupted her. “Can’t I see for myself?”
“No, no,” Katharine exclaimed. “It’s not that—”
Her look, passing beyond Mary, beyond the verge of the room and out beyond any words that came her way, wildly and passionately, convinced Mary that she, at any rate, could not follow such a glance to its end. She was baffled; she tried to think herself back again into the height of her love for Ralph. Pressing her fingers upon her eyelids, she murmured:
“You forget that I loved him too. I thought I knew him. I did know him.”