Part 15 (2/2)
”No, Rodney, no. I didn't _want_ you to come back. And I think--now--it would be better if you didn't stay.”
It seemed to her now that perhaps he had seen and was fighting what he saw.
”I'm not going to stay,” he said, ”I am going--in another hour--to take Powell away somewhere.”
He took it up where she had made him leave it. ”Then, Agatha, I shall come back again. I shall come back--let me see--on Sunday.”
She swept that aside.
”Where are you going to take him?”
”To a man I know who'll look after him.”
”Oh, Rodney, it'll break Milly's heart.”
She had come, in her agitation, to where he stood. She sat on the couch by the corner of the hearth, and he looked down at her there.
”No,” he said, ”it won't. It'll give him a chance to get all right. I've convinced her it's the only thing to do. He can't be left here for you to look after.”
”Did she tell you?”
”She wouldn't have told me a thing if I hadn't made her. I dragged it out of her, bit by bit.”
”Rodney, that was cruel of you.”
”Was it? I don't care. I'd have done it if she'd bled.”
”What did she tell you?”
”Pretty nearly everything, I imagine. Quite enough for me to see what, between them, they've been doing to you.”
”Did she tell you _how he got well_?”
He did not answer all at once. It was as if he drew back before the question, alien and disturbed, s.h.i.+rking the discerned, yet unintelligible issue.
”Did she tell you, Rodney?” Agatha repeated.
”Well, yes. She _told_ me.”
He seemed to be making, reluctantly, some admission. He sat down beside her, and his movement had the air of ending the discussion. But he did not look at her.
”What do you make of it?” she said.
This time he winced visibly.
”I don't make anything. If it happened--if it happened--like _that_, Agatha ...”
”It did happen.”
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