She had forgotten all else, indeed. She forgot too long. She did not know how long. It seemed that no more than a few minutes had passed before she was without warning struck with the shock of feeling that some one was in the room with her, standing near her, looking at her. She had been mad not to remember that exactly this thing would be sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she felt them--indecent--a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented even more than she resented his presence. He was too grossly ignorant to know that a man of breeding, having entered by chance, would have turned and gone away, professing not to have seen. He seemed to think--the dolt!--that he must make some apology. “Say! Lady Joan!” he began. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to butt in.” “Then go away,” she commanded. “Instantly--instantly!” She knew he must see that she spoke almost through her teeth in her effort to control her sobbing breath. But he made no move toward leaving her. He even drew nearer, looking at her in a sort of meditative, obstinate way. “N-no,” he replied deliberately. “I guess--I won’t.” “You won’t?” Lady Joan repeated after him. “Then I will.” He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm. “No. Not on your life. You won’t, either--if I can help it. And you’re going to _let_ me help it.” Almost any one but herself--any one, at least, who did not resent his very existence--would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence. “You’re going to _let_ me,” he repeated. She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm. “I suppose,” she said, with cutting slowness, “that you do not even _know_ that you are insolent. Take your hand away,” in arrogant command. He removed it with an unabashed half-smile. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t even know I’d put it there. It was a break--but I wanted to keep you.” That he not only wanted to keep her, but intended to do so, was apparent. His air was neither rough nor brutal, but he had ingeniously placed himself in the outlet between the big table and the way to the door, He put his hands in his pockets in his vulgar, unconscious way, and watched her. “Say, Lady Joan!” he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who wants to get something over. “I should be a fool if I didn’t see that you’re up against it--hard! What’s the matter?” His voice dropped again.