But it was no good: the thing would not be lied about. She nodded, gazing at him in utter despair. She went on nodding and nodding, asserting the truth in silence and with all her force, compelling him to believe it. She saw him flush faintly beneath his sallow skin. ‘I’m very sorry then,’ he said, in his frozen voice. She cried out: ‘Oh, _Roddy_! Did you never like me? Didn’t you even _like_ me? All these years! It seemed as if you did.... I couldn’t have grown to--like you so much if you hadn’t given me a little--a little return....’ ‘Of course I liked you very much,’ he said. ‘I always thought you were extremely attractive.’ ‘Attractive!’ She bowed her face in her hands. ‘Yes. I was attractive to you. And so.... That you should have treated me so lightly, Roddy! Oh, did I really, really deserve that?’ He was silent. ‘If you’d warned me, Roddy ... given me some hint. I was so romantic and idealistic about you--you’ve no idea.... I thought you _must_ think of me in the same sort of way I thought about you.... Couldn’t you have warned me?’ He said in a voice choked with exasperation: ‘I did try to shew you, I tell you. I should have thought I’d shewn you often enough. Didn’t I say I was never to be taken seriously?’ She sighed and nodded her head drearily. She was beaten. ‘Yes. Yes, you did. I wouldn’t be warned, I was such a fool. Oh, it’s all my fault. A good sell for me.’ ‘Well, I’d better go now,’ he said after a pause. He took a step or two and then turned back. She still leaned against the wall, and something in her attitude or expression seemed suddenly to move him. He lingered, hesitated. His face shewed a little trouble and confusion. ‘I suppose you’re all right?’ he said. ‘Oh, I shall be quite all right.’ ‘Please forget all about me.’ ‘I shan’t forget about you. But I shall forget all this--if you will do the same. We will meet in the future, Roddy, won’t we?--just as usual,--with all the others?’ ‘I think it would be better not to. I think we’d better not write to each other or ever meet again.’ ‘Not ever meet again, Roddy?’ How did he come to be master of such cold decisions? She felt like a child in futile conflict with the fixed and unalterable will of a grown-up person. ‘Why? Why? Why? Please do let me. Please do. I won’t ever be a nuisance again, I promise. You’ve said you liked me. Oh, I must see you! If I can’t see you, I can’t ever see any of them again. Don’t you see? And then I’d have _nothing_.... You wouldn’t tell them, would you, Roddy? Please let me see you again.’ It had lasted too long. In another moment she would be on her knees to him, hysterical, loathsome. A nervous quiver of his lips checked her suddenly and made her quiet. In some obscure way he was suffering too. He looked like the little boy whose face had implored her not to cry that time of the rabbit’s death. Yes, the spectacle of other people’s pain had always affected him unpleasantly.