Enraged, Finch cried out: "Shut up! It's a pack of lies!"
"Deny that you ever set out to deceive Renny!"
"What about you? You deceived him when you got married!"
"I wasn't cheating him out of anything!"
Finch rose to his feet, his arms rigid at his side, his hands clenched. "I'm not cheating Renny! I don't want to cheat anyone. I don't want the money! I want to give it back! I won't take it! I won't take it—I won't take it"
He burst into despairing tears. He walked up and down the room, wringing his hands, entreating Nicholas—entreating Ernest to take the money. He stopped before Renny, his face broken into a grotesque semblance to that of a gargoyle by devastating emotion, and begged him to take the money. He was so distraught that he did not know what he was doing, and when Renny pulled him on to the window-seat beside him he sank down bewildered, dazed by his own clamorous beseechings. His throat ached as though he had been screaming. Had he been screaming? He did not know. He saw them looking at him out of white, startled faces. He saw Pheasant run from the room. He saw Meggie clutching her crying baby. He heard Renny's voice in his ear, saying: "For Christ's sake, get hold of yourself! You make me ashamed for you!"
He put his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands. Against his cheek he felt the roughness of Renny's tweed sleeve, and he wanted to rub against it, to cling to it, to cry his heart out against it like a frightened little boy.
In a heavy undertone the talk went on and on, but no one addressed him. They were done with him now. They could not or would not take the money from him, but they would let him alone, and they would talk and talk, till from afar off the tidal wave he had been praying for would come roaring and sweep them all into oblivion. . . .
The tidal wave came, and it was Rags; the oblivion, tea.
