‘Oh, well!’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter, only he’ll be able to get heavy damages, and I wanted to clear him out. It’s the fortune of war. Well, I’m going. Good-day.’ He had walked across to the door and laid his hand upon the latch ere Haidee comprehended the meaning of his words. Then she sprang up with a scream. ‘And what of me?’ she cried. ‘Am I to be left here?’ ‘You brought yourself here,’ he retorted, eyeing her evilly. ‘I did not ask you to come.’ She stared at him open-mouthed as if he were some strange thing that had come into her line of vision for the first time. Her breath began to come and go in gasps. She was an elementary woman, but at this treatment from the man she had known as her lover a natural indignation sprang up in her and she began to find words. ‘But this!’ she said, with a nearer approach to honesty than she had ever known, ‘this is--desertion!’ ‘I am under no vow to you,’ he said. ‘You have implied it. I trusted you.’ ‘As Lucian trusted you,’ he sneered. She became speechless again. Something in her looks brought Darlington back from the door to her side. ‘Look here, Haidee,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘don’t be a little fool. Go home quickly and settle things with your husband. Tell him you wrote that letter in a fit of temper; tell him--oh, tell him any of the lies that women invent so easily on these occasions! It’s absolutely hopeless to look to me for protection, absolutely impossible for me to give it----’ He stopped. She was staring at him in a strange way--the way in which a dumb animal might stare if the butcher who was about to kill it condescended to try to explain to it why it was necessary that he should presently cut its throat. Darlington hummed and ha’d when he caught that look. He cast a furtive glance at the door and half turned away from Haidee. ‘Yes, quite impossible,’ he repeated. ‘The fact is--well, you may as well knew it now as hear it later on--I am going to be married.’ She nodded her head as if she quite understood his meaning, and he, looking full at her again, noticed that she was trying to moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue, and that her eyes were dilated to an unusual degree. ‘You can’t say that I’ve treated you badly,’ he said. ‘After all, you had the first chance, and it wasn’t my fault if you threw it away. There, now, be sensible and go back to London and make it up with Damerel. You can easily get round him--he’ll believe anything you tell him. Say you were upset at the thought of going to Italy with him, and lost your head. Things will come all right if you only manage your cards properly. Well, I’m going--good-day.’