here to see . . . him. You don't come here to see me, as far as I can see. Well then . . . "
Sylvia looked round at him with all her eyes, wide open as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep.
"I didn't know I was coming," she said. "It came into my head to come suddenly. Ten minutes before I started. And I came. I didn't know papers were wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had wanted them. . . . You never asked me if I had any papers. You just froze on to me and had me into your special carriage. . . . I didn't know you were coming."
That seemed to Perowne the last insult. He exclaimed:
"Oh, damn it, Sylvia! you must have known. . . . You were at the Quirks' squash on Wednesday evening. And they knew. My best friends."
"Since you ask for it," she said, "I didn't know. . . . And I would not have come by that train if I had known you would be going by it. You force me to say rude things to you." She added: "Why can't you be more conciliatory?" to keep him quiet for a little. His jaw dropped down.
She was wondering where Christopher had got the money to pay for a bed at the hotel. Only a very short time before she had drawn all the balance of his banking account, except for a shilling. It was the middle of the month and he could not have drawn any more pay. . . . That, of course, was a try on her part. He might be forced into remonstrating. In the same way she had tried on the accusation that he had carried off her sheets. It was sheer wilfulness, and when she looked again at his motionless features she knew that she had been rather stupid. . . . But she was at
