He nodded.
"I had to come to you. I could not wait."
He nodded again.
"I—I read something." To take a white-hot iron and sear herself would have been easier than this.
"Yes," he said.
She felt that the look was coming again—the look which she had surprised in his face. His hands dropped lifelessly from her shoulders, and he turned and went to the door, where he stood with his back to her, silhouetted against the eastern sky all pink from the reflection of sunset. He would not help her. Perhaps he could not. The things were true. There had been a grain of hope within her, ready to sprout.
"I read two articles from the Newcastle Guardian about you—about your life."
"Yes," he said. But he did not turn.
"How you had—how you had earned your living. How you had gained your power," she went on, her pain lending to her voice an exquisite note of many modulations.
"Yes—Cynthy," he said, and still stared at the eastern sky.