“He spoke like one.”
“So do I, for the matter of that.”
“Then he was a Canadian. Was he?”
“He was a Canadian.”
“Oh, then that accounts for it. But you did puzzle me at first. But how
did you come to meet him? Was it at that Down and Out Club that papa and
Mr. Christian are so interested in? You go to it, too, don’t you? I think
Stephen Cantyre said you did.”
“Yes, I go to it, too.”
She grew pensive, resting her chin on a hand, with her elbow on the arm
of the chair.
“I suppose it’s all right; but I never can understand how men can be so
merciful to one other’s vices. It looks as if they recognized the seed of
them within themselves.”
“Probably that’s the reason.”
“Women don’t feel like that about one another.”
“They haven’t the same cause.”
“I hope he’s doing better—that man—and picking up again.”
“He is.”
She asked, in quite another tone, “You’re not going back to New York
to-morrow, are you?”
“I’m not sure—yet.”
“Hilda said she was going to try to persuade you and the Grahams to stay
till Tuesday. If you can stay, mamma and I were planning—”
I put myself directly in front of her, no more than a few feet away, my
hands in the pockets of my jacket.
“Look at me again. Look at me well. Try to recall—”
Slowly, very slowly, she struggled to her feet. The color went out of her
lips and the light from her eyes as she backed away from me in a kind of
terror.
“What—what—are you trying to make me—to make me understand?”
“Think! How should I know all that I’ve been saying if—”
“If the man himself didn’t tell you. But he did.”
“No, he didn’t. No one had to tell me.”
She reached the veranda rail, which she clutched with one hand, while the
other, clenched, was pressed against her breast.
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes, I do mean—”
“Oh, you can’t?”
“Why can’t I.”
“Because—because it isn’t—it isn’t possible! You”—she seemed to be
shivering—“you could never have—”
“But I did.”
She gasped brokenly. “You? You?”