Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/71

 to upset every one's plans just for a whim of your own? For myself I don't care. You could go home for ever for all I care. I didn't want to marry any one. But what my father wished had to be."

She clung to him then, crying again and again between her sobs:

"Oh, let me go home! Let me go home! Let me go home!"

Harkness fancied that the man put his hands on her shoulders. His voice, cold, lifeless, impersonal, crossed the room.

"That is enough. He is waiting for us downstairs. He will be wondering where we are."

The little white shadow seemed to turn to the window, towards the limitless expanse of sunlit sea. Then a voice, small, proud, empty of emotion, said:

"Father wished me"

Harkness was once more alone in the room.

They had gone but the girl's fear remained. It was there as truly as the two figures had been and its reality was stronger than their reality.

Harkness had the sense of having been caught, and it was exactly as though now, as he stood alone there in the gallery staring down into the room, some Imp had touched him on the shoulder, crying, "Now you're in for it! Now you're in for it! The situation has got you now."