Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/149

Rh "What has happened is that I've found it impossible to listen to you." And she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.

He had already hastened round another way, however, so as to meet her in her quick circuit of the hall. "That's all you've got to say to me after what has passed between us?"

He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her passionate denial set him a limit. "I've got to say—sorry as I am—that if you must have an answer it's this: that never, Lord John, never, can there be anything more between us." And her gesture cleared her path, permitting her to achieve her flight. "Never, no, never," she repeated as she went—"never, never, never!" She got off by the door at which she had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and defeated, left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a chair and remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the great blank splendour.