“All right. See that you let Barrington go pleasantly to hell if you get shook on him.”
“Hell! Bob! Are you in a conspiracy to throw that man at me or what?” He had thrust better than he knew.
He was astonished to see her turn and go out of the office. He sat staring blankly at the wall in front of him for some minutes. Did she really care for that man? Up till now it had only been the fear that she might come to do so that had been in his mind. And if she did what was he to do? He dropped his head in his hands and thought back. And he knew he had no choice.
Valerie walked almost to the centre of the town in a rage against Bob. She told herself he had no business to hang on to a former relation in this manner. That was the kind of weakness that she loathed. Why could he not accept the inevitable? Just because she had never let him see how painful, how frought with struggle and indecision the thing had been for her he had supposed she had not felt about it. And then that remark about Dane. She told herself she was not in love with Dane. He was not in love with her, and she detested this anticipatory settlement of her affairs.
She turned up Queen Street and walked to the fringe of the town and a little way on along the coast road. It was a cool windy night. But she found she was too upset to calm down all at once. She did wish Dane had not been so drunk as to be still in bed. She could not see how he could be any more sensitive than she to the tragedy in life. Much of her positive manner was due to the fact that she had to set her teeth on life or she could not have endured it herself. She stopped in the road and looked up at a black cloud that blotted out a part of the Milky
