"You needn't be afraid," he said. "Of course I am going to marry her."
He turned away from her as he had turned away five years ago, with the
same hopeless sense of dishonour and defeat. She called him back, as
she had called him back five years ago, and for the same purpose, of
delivering a final stab. Only that this time she knew it was a stab;
and her own heart felt the pain as she delivered it.
But the terrible thing had to be done. She had got to return the
manuscript, the gift that should never have been given. She gathered
the loosened sheets tenderly, like things that she was grieved to part
from. He admitted that she was handling her sword with all gentleness
so as to avoid as far as possible any suggestion of a thrust.
"You must take them back," she said. "I can't keep them--or--or have
anything to do with them after what you told me. I should feel as if
I'd taken what belonged to some one else."
As he took the sheets from her and pocketed them, she felt that again
he was pocketing an insult as well as a stab.
But the victim was no longer an inexperienced youth. So he smiled
valorously, as beseemed his manhood. "And yet," he murmured, "you say
it isn't true."
She did not contradict him this time. And as he turned he heard behind
him the closing of the door.
BOOK IV
THE MAN HIMSELF
CHAPTER LXII
After all, the wedding did not take place on the twenty-fifth; for on
the twentieth Keith was summoned to Ilford by a letter from his
stepmother.
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