"I really did think that he was attached to me. What did he want to
pretend for, like this? I thought nothing could hurt me any more. Oh
yes. I would have gone up, but I felt suddenly so tired. So tired. And
then you were there. I didn't know what you would do. You might have
tried to follow me and I didn't think I could run--not up hill--not
then."
She had raised her white face a little, and it was queer to hear her say
these things. At that time of the morning there are comparatively few
people out in that part of the town. The broad interminable perspective
of the East India Dock Road, the great perspective of drab brick walls,
of grey pavement, of muddy roadway rumbling dismally with loaded carts
and vans lost itself in the distance, imposing and shabby in its spacious
meanness of aspect, in its immeasurable poverty of forms, of colouring,
of life--under a harsh, unconcerned sky dried by the wind to a clear
blue. It had been raining during the night. The sunshine itself seemed
poor. From time to time a few bits of paper, a little dust and straw
whirled past us on the broad flat promontory of the pavement before the
rounded front of the hotel.
Flora de Barral was silent for a while. I said: "And next day you thought better of it."
Again she raised her eyes to mine with that peculiar expression of
informed innocence; and again her white cheeks took on the faintest tinge
of pink--the merest shadow of a blush.
"Next day," she uttered distinctly, "I didn't think. I remembered. That
was enough. I remembered what I should never have forgotten. Never. And
Captain Anthony arrived at the cottage in the evening."
"Ah yes. Captain Anthony," I murmured. And she repeated also in a
murmur, "Yes! Captain Anthony." The faint flush of warm life left her
face. I subdued my voice still more and not looking at her: "You found
him sympathetic?" I ventured.
Her long dark lashes went down a little with an air of calculated
discretion. At least so it seemed to me. And yet no one could say that
I was inimical to that girl. But there you are! Explain it as you may,
in this world the friendless, like the poor, are always a little suspect,
as if honesty and delicacy were only possible to the privileged few.
"Why do you ask?" she said after a time, raising her eyes suddenly to
mine in an effect of candour which on the same principle (of the
disinherited not being to be trusted) might have been judged equivocal.