Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/187

Rh her, after service, before they had left the place; and then, on the walk back, took care they should be quite by themselves. She opened fire with a promptitude clearly intended to deprive him of every advantage.

'Don't you think it's about time, you know, to let Margaret Hamer alone?'

He found his laugh again a resource. 'Is that what you came down to say to me?'

'I suppose what you mean is that in that case I might as well have stayed at home. But I can assure you,' Mrs. Despard continued, 'that if you don't care for her, I at least do. I'd do anything for her!'

'Would you?' Philip Mackern asked. 'Then, for God's sake, try to induce her to show me some frankness and reason. Knowing that you know all about it and that I should find you here, that's what determined me. And I find you talking to me,' he went on, 'about giving her up. How can I give her up? What do you mean by my not caring for her? Don't I quite sufficiently show—and to the point absolutely of making a public fool of myself—that I don't care for anything else in life?'

Mrs. Despard, slightly to his surprise and pacing beside him a moment in silence, seemed arrested by this challenge. But she presently found her answer. 'That's not the way, you know, to get on at the Treasury.'

'I don't pretend it is; and it's just one of the things that I thought of asking you to bring home to her better than any one else can. She plays the very devil with my work. She makes me hope just enough to be all upset, and yet never, for an hour, enough to be—well, what you may call made strong; enough to know where I am.'

'You're where you've no business to be—that's where you are,' said Mrs. Despard. You've no right whatever to persecute a girl who, to listen to you, will have to do something that she doesn't want, and that would be most improper if she did.'