RICE-PAPERS
After a while that seemed interminable she heard his voice again.
“I suppose you think I’m an awful rotter.”
She turned her head and tried to read his face, but he kept it away from her, toward the opposite window. The feeling that she had voiced to Betty Heathcote of wanting to “mother” him came over her in a warm effusion.
“Nothing that you can say to me will make me think you one, Cyril,” she said gently.
“Thanks awf’ly,” he murmured. And after a pause, “I am though, you know.”
She leaned forward impulsively and laid a hand on his knee.
“No. You’re acting strangely, but I know that there’s a reason for it. As for your being a coward”—she laughed softly—“it’s impossible—quite impossible to make me believe that.”
He laid his fingers over hers for a moment.
“Nice of you to have confidence in a chap and all that, but appearances are against me—that’s the difficulty.”
“Why are they against you? Why should they be against you? Because you—” She stopped, for here she felt that she was approaching dangerous ground. Instead of parleying longer, she used her woman’s weapons frankly and leaning toward him put an arm around his neck and compelled him to turn his face to hers. “Oh, Cyril, won’t you tell me what this mystery is that is coming between us? Won’t you let me help you? I want to be in the sunlight with you again. It can’t go on this way, one of us in the dark and the other in the light. I have felt it for weeks. When I spoke to you tonight about going to France it
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