unanalysed way that this was what she had expected ever since he had come into the room.
“Oh!” she said at last, holding his hand very tightly, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry—”
He had seen, of course, from the beginning that this business must be told her, but his one desire was to hurry through it, to get it done and banished, once and for all, from their conversation.
“It happened,” he went on gruffly, “quite suddenly. I wasn't in any way prepared for it. She just went off to Paris, after leaving a letter. With the death of the boy and the failure of my book—it just seemed the last blow—the end.”
“The end—at thirty?” she said softly, almost to herself, “surely, no—with the pluck that you've got—and the health. What are you going to do—about it all?”
“To do?” he smiled bitterly. “Do you suppose that I will ask her to come back to me? Do you suppose that I want her back? No, that's all done with. All that life's finished.” Then he added slowly, not looking at her as he spoke—“I'm going to live with my father.”
He remembered, clearly enough, that he had told her many things about his early life at Scaw House. He knew that she must now, as he flung that piece of information at her, have recalled to herself all those things that he had told her. He felt rather than perceived, the agitation that seized her at those last words of his. Her hand slowly withdrew from his, it fell back on to her lap and he felt her whole body draw, as it were, into itself, as though it had come into contact with some terror, some unexplained alarm.
But she only said:
“And what will you do at home, Peter?”
He answered her with a kind of bravado—“Oh, write, I suppose. I went up to see the old man yesterday. Changed enormously since the old days. I found him quite genial, seemed very anxious that I should come. I expect he's a bit lonely.”
She did not answer this and there was a long awkward pause. He knew, as they sat there, in troubled silence that his conscience was awake. It had seemed to be so
