He had walked twenty
miles at a rapid pace. He had heard shots and found a corpse, and
carried the latter by the tail across country. Finally, he had had
the stunning shock of discovering that Elizabeth Boyd loved him.
He was not himself. He found a difficulty in concentrating. With
the result that, in answer to this appeal from a beautiful girl
whom he had once imagined that he loved, all he could find to say
was: 'How do you mean?'
Claire, never an adept at patience, just succeeded in swallowing
the remark that sprang into her mind. It was incredible to her
that a man could exist who had so little intuition. She had not
anticipated the necessity of being compelled to put the substance
of her meaning in so many blunt words, but it seemed that only so
could she make him understand.
'I mean, can't we be engaged again, Bill?'
Bill's overtaxed brain turned one convulsive hand-spring, and came
to rest with a sense of having dislocated itself. This was too
much. This was not right. No fellow at the end of a hard evening
ought to have to grapple with this sort of thing. What on earth
did she mean, springing questions like that on him? How could they
be engaged? She was going to marry someone else, and so was he.
Something of these thoughts he managed to put into words:
'But you're engaged to--'
'I've broken my engagement with Mr Pickering.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233