But the familiar, kindly tone suddenly awoke Felicia to the sense of their relations. She hung her head, confused.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I ought not to have spoken like that to you—I lost control over myself. You mustn't think of what I have said.”
“I'll think of it all through my life, Felicia,” said Raine.
A silence fell upon them. The girl was shaken and weary. Raine was confronting a new hope, that made his heart beat.
“Raine,” she said, after a while.
He did not reply. She looked up, and saw him staring into the street.
“By God!” he cried, suddenly, and before Felicia could realize what he was doing, he had seized his hat from the table and had rushed from the room, leaving the door open.
Felicia leant over the balustrade, and looked down. Katherine was there, near the corner, in the act of giving over her dressing-bag to a lad in a blue blouse, who had offered his services. Felicia watched until she saw Raine emerge beneath the archway, stride like a man possessed after Katherine, catch her up, and lay his hand upon her arm, as she turned a startled face towards him. Then the tears came into her eyes, and she left the window and went down to her own room, where she locked herself in and cried miserably. Such is the apparently inconsequent way of women.
“Katherine,” said Raine, when he came up with her. She stopped, and looked at him speechlessly.
“I have just caught you in time,” he said, with masculine brusqueness. “We must talk together. Come into the Gardens.”