LEWISHAM INSISTS
know," she said, suddenly beginning to cry. "How can I tell you? It is a lie. I did know. I did know all the time."
He stared at her in white astonishment. He fell behind her one step, and then in a stride came level again. Then, a silence, a silence that it seemed would never end. She had stopped crying, she was one huge suspense, not daring even to look at his face. And at last he spoke.
"No," he said slowly. "I don't mind even that. I don't care—even if it was that."
Abruptly they turned into the King's Road, with its roar of wheeled traffic and hurrying foot-passengers, and forthwith a crowd of boys with a broken-spirited Guy involved and separated them. In a busy highway of a night one must needs talk disconnectedly in shouted snatches or else hold one's peace. He glanced at her face and saw that it was set again. Presently she turned southward out of the tumult into a street of darkness and warm blinds, and they could go on talking again.
"I understand what you mean," said Lewisham. "I know I do. You knew but you did not want to know. It was like that."
But her mind had been active. "At the end of this road," she said, gulping a sob, "you must go back. It was kind of you to come, Mr. Lewisham. But you were ashamed—you are sure to be ashamed. My employer is a spiritualist, and my stepfather is a professional Medium, and my mother is a spiritualist. You were quite right not to speak to me last night. Quite. It was kind of you to come, but you
339
