She left him in her sitting-room while she went through into her bedroom
to take off her hat and jacket and take a glance into her mirror. When
she came back, she found him standing at her window looking out. He
didn't turn when she came in, but almost immediately he began speaking.
She went rather limp at the sound of his voice and dropped down on a
cushioned ottoman in front of the fireplace, and squeezed her hands
together between her knees.
"I don't know how much you will have understood," he began, "probably a
good deal. You told me in Dubuque--as you were quite right to tell
me--that I mustn't come back to you. And now I've disobeyed you and
come. What I hope you will have guessed is that I wouldn't have come
except that I'd something to tell you--something different from
the--idiocies I tormented you with in Dubuque;--something I felt you
were entitled to be told. But I felt--this is what you won't have
understood--I felt that I hadn't any right to speak to you at all, about
anything vital, about anything that concerned us, until I'd given you
some sort of guarantee--until I'd shown you that I was a person it was
possible to deal reasonably with.
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