Page:Night and Day (1919).pdf/479

 Katharine looked at. There were ghosts in the room, and one, strangely and sadly, was the ghost of herself. The minutes went by.

“What would be the time now?” said Katharine at last. The half-hour was not quite spent.

“I’m going to get dinner ready,” said Mary, rising from her table.

“Then I'll go,” said Katharine.

“Why don’t you stay? Where are you going?”

Katharine looked round the room, conveying her uncertainty in her glance.

“Perhaps I might find him,” she mused.

“But why should it matter? You'll see him another day.”

Mary spoke, and intended to speak, cruelly enough.

“I was wrong to come here,” Katharine replied.

Their eyes met with antagonism, and neither flinched.

“You had a perfect right to come here,” Mary answered.

A loud knocking at the door interrupted them. Mary went to open it, and returning with some note or parcel, Katharine looked away so that Mary might not read her disappointment.

“Of course you had a right to come,” Mary repeated, laying the note upon the table.

“No,” said Katharine. “Except that when one’s desperate one has a sort of right. I am desperate. How do I know what’s happening to him now? He may do anything. He may wander about the streets all night. Anything may happen to him.”

She spoke with a self-abandonment that Mary had never seen in her.

“You know you exaggerate; you're talking nonsense,” she said roughly.

“Mary, I must talk—I must tell you”

“You needn’t tell me anything,” Mary interrupted her. “Can’t I see for myself?”