Part 74 (1/2)

'Why was it, then?'

'You're too young to discuss such a story.' He turned away.

'I'm not so young,' said the shaking voice, 'as she was when----'

'Very well, then, if you will have it!' His look was ill to meet, for any one who loved him. 'The truth is, it didn't weigh upon her as it seems to on you, that I wasn't able to marry her.'

'Why are you so sure of that?'

'Because she didn't so much as hint at it when she wrote that she meant to break off the--the----'

'What made her write like that?'

'Why _will_ you go on talking of what's so long over and ended?'

'What reason did she give?'

'If your curiosity has so got the upper hand, _ask her_.'

Her eyes were upon him. In a whisper, 'You're afraid to tell me,' she said.

He went over to the window, seeming to wait there for something that did not come. He turned round at last.

'I still hoped, at _that_ time, to win my father over. She blamed me because'--again he faced the window and looked blindly out--'if the child had lived it wouldn't have been possible to get my father to--to overlook it.'

'You--wanted--it _overlooked_?' the girl said faintly. 'I don't underst----'

He came back to her on a wave of pa.s.sion. 'Of course you don't understand. If you did you wouldn't be the beautiful, tender, innocent child you are.' He took her hand, and tried to draw her to him.

She withdrew her hand, and shrank from him with a movement, slight as it was, so tragically eloquent, that fear for the first time caught hold of him.

'I am glad you didn't mean to desert her, Geoffrey. It wasn't your fault, after all--only some misunderstanding that can be cleared up.'

'_Cleared up?_'

'Yes, cleared up.'

'You aren't thinking that this miserable old affair I'd as good as forgotten----'

He did not see the horror-struck glance at the door, but he heard the whisper--

'_Forgotten!_'

'No, no'--he caught himself up--'I don't mean exactly forgotten. But you're torturing me so that I don't know what I'm saying.' He went closer. 'You aren't going to let this old thing come between you and me?'

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips, and then took it away.

'I can't make or unmake the past,' she said steadily. 'But I'm glad, at least, that you didn't mean to desert her in her trouble. You'll remind her of that first of all, won't you?'

She was moving across the room as she spoke, and, when she had ended, the handkerchief went quickly to her lips again as if to shut the door on sobbing.