Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/69

 never said I was to any one before, but now ... now ..."

She was crying, softly, terribly, with the terrified crying of real and desperate fear.

Harkness had been about to move. He did not, unseen and his presence unrealised, wish to overhear, but her tears checked him. Although he could not see her he had detected in her voice a note of pride. He fancied that she would wish anything rather than to be thus seen by a stranger. He stayed where he was. He could see the man's face, thin, white, the nose long pointed, a dark, almost grotesque shadow.

"Why are you frightened?"

"I don't know, I can't tell. I have never been frightened before."

"Have I been unkind to you?"

"No, but you don't love me."

"Did I ever pretend to love you? Didn't you know from the very first that no one in the world matters to me except my father?"

"It is of your father that I am afraid.... These last three days in that terrible house.... I'm so frightened, Herrick. I want to go home only for a little while. Just for a week before we go abroad."

"All our plans are made now. You know that we are sailing to-morrow evening."

"Yes, but I could come afterwards.... Forgive