Julia was crouching in a corner, her elbows on the old chopping-block, her face hidden on her tightly-clenched hands, while she struggled angrily with the shaking sobs. For a moment she struggled, then mastered herself somehow and looked up, perhaps because she meant to rise and set about her work. She had been crying hard and tears do not improve the average face, certainly they did not hers; and she had been trying hard to stop, cramming a screwed-up handkerchief into her eyes and that did not improve matters either. One would have said her face could have expressed nothing but the extremity of unbecoming woe, yet when she caught sight of Rawson-Clew standing just under the window it changed extraordinarily and to anger. "Go away!" she said; "go away! Do you hear?" Rawson-Clew did not go away; he came nearer and Julia drew further into the corner, ensconsing herself behind the chopping-block, and looking about as inviting of approach as a trapped rat. "Julia," he said. "Go away!" was her only answer. "Why did you send me away?" "Because I wanted you gone." "Because Captain Polkington is not dead? Is that it?" "You are a dishonourable eavesdropper! No, it wasn't that." He sat down on the chopping-block barricading her corner so that she could not get out without stepping over him. "Do you know it strikes me that you are not strictly honest either, at least not strictly truthful just now." Julia tugged at her skirt; the chopping-block was on the hem and he on it so that she could not get free. "Will you please go," she said, with a catch in her breath. That is the worst of these half-suppressed, unspent storms of tears, they have such a tendency to return and break out again inconveniently. "If it were not for Captain Polkington would you have sent me away?" he asked. "Y--e--s," she answered, fighting with her tears. "Oh, go! Please, please go!" She crumpled herself into a small miserable heap and he leaned over the block and drew her into his arms. For a moment she struggled, burrowing her head into his coat; there was a good deal of burrowing and not much struggling. "No, you wouldn't," he said to her hair, "you would have married me." "I might have said I would, but I shouldn't really have done it," she contended without looking up. "I shouldn't when it came to the point. You had better let me go, I am spoiling your coat, my face is all wet--and I don't know where my handkerchief is." "Take mine, you will find it somewhere. Tell me, why would you not have married me when it came to the point? Because your courage failed you?" No answer; then, "I can't find that handkerchief." "You have not tried. Are you afraid to try? Are you afraid of me? Is that why you would not have married me--you would have been afraid to live at close quarters with me? Do you still think you don't know me well enough?" "I don't know your name." The answer was ridiculous, but he knew how the ridiculous touched even tragedies for Julia.