Page:In The Cage (London, Duckworth, 1898).djvu/103

Rh . She stared straight away in silence till she felt that she looked like an idiot; then, to say something, to say nothing, she attempted a sound which ended in a flood of tears.

 

Her tears helped her really to dissimulate, for she had instantly, in so public a situation, to recover herself. They had come and gone in half a minute, and she immediately explained them. 'It's only because I'm tired. It's that—it's that!' Then she added a trifle incoherently: 'I shall never see you again.'

'Ah, but why not?' The mere tone in which her companion asked this satisfied her once for all as to the amount of imagination for which she could count on him. It was naturally not large: it had exhausted itself in having arrived at what he had already touched upon—the sense of an intention in her poor zeal at Cocker's. But any deficiency of this kind was no fault in him: he wasn't obliged to have an inferior cleverness—