Part 14 (2/2)
”I don't want you to see me like this. I'm--I'm not pretty to look at.”
”That doesn't matter in the very least. Besides, I can hardly see you in this light.”
He drew her cloak about her and fastened it. He could feel, from the nearness of her flushed mouth, the heat and the taste of grief. She flung her head back to the wall away from him. Her hood slipped, and he put his arm behind her shoulders and raised it, and drew it gently forward to shelter her head from the rough wall. His hand was wet with the rain from her loose hair.
”How long have you been walking about in the rain before you came here?”
She tried to speak, and with the effort her sobs broke out in violence.
It struck him again, and with another pang of pity, how like a child she was in the completeness of her abandonment! He sat down beside her, leaning forward, his face hidden in his hands. He felt that to hide his own face was somehow to screen her.
Her sobbing went on, and her hand, stretched toward him unawares, clutched at the top of the wooden seat.
”Would you like me to go away and come back again?” he said presently.
”No!” she cried. And at her own cry a terrible convulsion shook her. He could feel her whole body strain and stiffen with the effort to control it. Then she was calm.
”I beg your pardon,” she said. ”I told you, didn't I, that you'd better go away?”
”Do you suppose that I'm going to leave you here? Just when I've found you?”
”Miss Keating's left me. Did you know?”
”Yes, I heard. Is it--is it a great trouble to you?”
”Yes.” She shook again.
”Surely,” he began, and hesitated, and grew bold. ”Surely it needn't be?
She wasn't, was she, such a particularly amiable person?”
”She couldn't help it. She was so unhappy.”
His voice softened. ”You were very fond of her?”
”Yes. How did you know she'd gone?”
It was too dark in there for him to see the fear in her eyes as she turned them to him.
”Oh,” he said, ”we heard she'd left. I suppose she had to go.”
”Yes,” said Mrs. Tailleur, ”she had to go.”
”Well, I shouldn't distress myself any more about it. Tell me, have you been walking about in the rain ever since she left?”
”I--I think so.”
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