Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/460

Rh She gave him a limp hand and spoke in an exhausted voice.

"You know—all?" she asked.

"All the outline, anyhow."

"Why has he done this to me?"

Melville looked profoundly sympathetic through a pause.

"I feel," she said, "that it isn't coarseness."

"Certainly not," said Melville.

"It is some mystery of the imagination that I cannot understand. I should have thought—his career at any rate—would have appealed" She shook her head and regarded a pot of ferns fixedly for a space.

"He has written to you?" asked Melville.

"Three times," she said, looking up.

Melville hesitated to ask the extent of that correspondence, but she left no need for that.

"I had to ask him," she said. "He kept it all from me, and I had to force it from him before he would tell."

"Tell!" said Melville, "what?"

"What he felt for her and what he felt for me."

"But did he?"

"He has made it clearer. But still even now. No, I don't understand."

She turned slowly and watched Melville's face as she spoke: "You know, Mr. Melville, that this has been an enormous shock to me. I suppose I never really knew him. I suppose I—idealised him. I thought he cared for—our work at any rate He did care for our work. He believed in it. Surely he believed in it."