The Convert Part 73

'Enough dynamite in that,' he commented. 'Rather too much, isn't there, little girl?'

'Geoffrey, I know her story.'

He looked at her for the first time since Farnborough left the room.

'Whose story?'

'Miss Levering's.'

'_Whose?_' He crushed the rough note of his manifesto into his pocket.

'Vida Levering's.'

He stared at the girl, till across the moment's silence a cry of misery went out--

'Why did you desert her?'

'I?' he said, like one staggered by the sheer wildness of the charge.

'_I?_'

But no comfort of doubting seemed to cross the darkness of Jean's backward look into the past.

'Oh, why did you do it?'

'What, in the name of----? What has she been saying to you?'

'Some one else told me part. Then the way you looked when you saw her at Aunt Ellen's--Miss Levering's saying you didn't know her--then your letting out that you knew even the curious name on the handkerchief--oh, I pieced it together.'

While she poured out the disjointed sentences, he had recovered his self-possession.

'Your ingenuity is undeniable,' he said coldly, rising to his feet. But he paused as the girl went on--

'And then when she said that at the meeting about "the dark hour," and I looked at her face, it flashed over me----Oh, why did you desert her?'

It was as if the iteration of that charge stung him out of his chill anger.

'I _didn't_ desert her,' he said.

'Ah-h!' Her hands went fluttering up to her eyes, and hid the quivering face. Something in the action touched him, his face changed, and he made a sudden pa.s.sionate movement toward the trembling figure standing there with hidden eyes. In another moment his arms would have been round her.

Her m.u.f.fled voice saying, 'I'm glad. I'm glad,' checked him. He stood bewildered, making with noiseless lips the word '_Glad?_' She was 'glad'

he hadn't tired of her rival? The girl brushed the tears from her eyes, and steadied herself against the table.

'She went away from you, then?'

The momentary softening had vanished out of Geoffrey Stonor's face. In its stead the look of aloofness that few dared brave, the warning 'thus far and no farther' stamped on every feature, he answered--

'You can hardly expect me to enter into----'

She broke through the barrier without ruth--such strength, such courage has honest pain.

'You mean she went away from you?'

'Yes!' The sharp monosyllable fell out like a thing metallic.

'Was that because you wouldn't marry her?'

'I couldn't marry her--and she knew it.' He turned on his heel.

'Did you want to?'

He paused nearly at the window, and looked back at her. She deserved to have the bare 'yes,' but she was a child. He would soften a little the truth's harsh impact upon the young creature's shrinking jealousy.

'I thought I wanted to marry her then. It's a long time ago.'

'And why couldn't you?'

He controlled a movement of strong irritation. 'Why are you catechizing me? It's a matter that concerns another woman.'

'If you say it doesn't concern me, you're saying'--her lip trembled--'saying that you don't concern me.'

With more difficulty than the girl dreamed, he compelled himself to answer quietly--

'In those days--I--I was absolutely dependent on my father.'

'Why, you must have been thirty, Geoffrey.'

'What? Oh--thereabouts.'

'And everybody says you're so clever.'

'Well, everybody's mistaken.'

She left the table, and drew nearer to him. 'It must have been terribly hard----'

Sounding the depth of sympathy in the gentle voice, he turned towards her to meet a check in the phrase--

'----terribly hard for you both.'

He stood there stonily, but looking rather handsome in his big, sulky way. The sort of person who dictates terms rather than one to accept meekly the thing that might befall.

Something of that overbearing look of his must have penetrated the clouded consciousness of the girl, for she was saying--

'You! a man like _you_ not to have had the freedom, that even the lowest seem to have----'

'Freedom?'

'To marry the woman they choose.'

'She didn't break off our relations because I couldn't marry her.'