"I'm not going back to the paper," she curtly answered, cutting short the smile with fierceness, almost with ferocity. Beyond question she was rude in her bitterness. She asked herself: "Why do I talk like this? Why can't I talk naturally and gently and cheerfully? I've really got nothing against him." But she could not talk otherwise than she did talk. It was by this symptom of biting acrimony that her agitation showed itself. She knew that she was scowling as she looked at the opposite wall, but she could not smooth away the scowl. "No, I suppose not," he said quietly. "But are you thinking of coming back to Turnhill?" She remained mute for some seconds. A feeling of desolation came over her, and it seemed to her that she welcomed it, trying to intensify it, and yielding her features to it. "How do I know?" she muttered at length, shrugging her shoulders. "Because if you aren't," he resumed, "it's no use you keeping that house of yours empty. You must remember it's just as you left it; and the things in it aren't taking any good, either." She shrugged her shoulders again. "I don't see that it matters to anybody but me," she said, after another pause, with a sort of frigid and disdainful nonchalance. And once more she reflected: "Is it possible that I can behave so odiously?" He stood up suddenly. "I don't know what you and Sarah have been plotting together," he said, wounded and contemptuous, yet with lightness. "But I'm sure I don't want to interfere in your affairs. With Sarah's I've got to interfere, unfortunately, and a famous time I'm having!" His nostrils grew fastidious. "But not yours! I only promised your uncle.... Your uncle told me you wanted me to--" He broke off. In an instant she grew confused, alarmed, and extremely ashamed. Her mood had changed in a flash. It seemed to her that she was in presence of a disgraceful disaster, which she herself had brought about by wicked and irresponsible temerity. She was like a child who, having naughtily trifled with danger, stands aghast at the calamity which his perverseness has caused. She was positively affrighted. She reflected in her terror: "I asked for this, and I've got it!" George Cannon stooped and picked up his little bag. There he towered, high and massive, above her! And she felt acutely her slightness, her girlishness, and her need of his help. She could not afford to transform sympathy into antipathy. She was alone in the world. Never before had she realized, as she realized then, the lurking terror of her loneliness. The moment was critical. In another moment he might be gone from the room, and she left solitary to irremediable humiliation and self-disgust. "Please!" she whispered appealingly. The whole of her being became an appeal--the glance, the gesture, the curve of the slim and fragile body. She was like a slave. She had no pride, no secret reserve of thought. She was an instinct. Tears showed in her eyes and affected her voice.