"Only--you've been thinking that we're not quite good enough for you--that we'd soil your Trojan carpets and chairs--that we'd stain your Trojan relations. I--I know--I----"

And then she broke down altogether. She was kneeling by the table with her head in her arms, sobbing as though her heart would break.

"Oh, I say, Dahlia, don't! I can't bear to see you cry--it will be all right, old girl, to-morrow--it will really--and then you will see that it was wiser. You will thank me for speaking about it. Of course we'll always be good friends. I----"

"Robin, you don't mean it. You can't!" She had risen from her knees and now stood by him, timidly, with one hand on his arm. "You have forgotten all those splendid times at Cambridge. Don't you remember that evening on the Backs? Just you and I alone when there was that man singing on the other side of the water, when you said that we would be like that always--together. Oh, Robin dear, it can't have been all nothing to you."

She looked very charming with her eyes a little wet and her hair a little dishevelled. But his resolution must not weaken--now that he had progressed so far, he must not go back. But he put his arm round her.

"Really, old girl, it is better--for both of us. We can wait. Perhaps in a few years' time it will seem different again. We can think about it then. I don't want to seem selfish, but you must think about me a little. You must see how hard it has been for me to say this, and that it has only been with the greatest difficulty that I've been strong enough. Believe me, dear, it is harder for me than it is for you--much harder."

He was really getting on very well. He had had no idea that he would do it so nicely. Poor girl! it was hard luck--perhaps he had led her to expect rather too much--those letters of his had been rather too warm, a little indiscreet. But no doubt she would marry some excellent man of her own cla.s.s--in a few years she would look back and wonder how she had ever had the fortune to know so intimately a man of Robin's rank! Meanwhile, the scene had better end as soon as possible.

She had let him keep his arm round her waist, and now she suddenly leant back and looked up in his face.

"Robin, darling," she whispered, "you can't mean it--not that we should part like this. Why, think of the times that we have had--the splendid, glorious times--and all that we're going to have. Think of all that you've said to me, over and over again----"

She crept closer to him. "You love me really, dear, all the same.

It's only that some one's been talking to you and telling you that it's foolish. But that mustn't make any difference. We're strong enough to face all the world. You know that you said you were in the summer, and I'm sure that you are now. Wait till to-morrow, dear, and you'll see it all differently."

"I tell you n.o.body's been talking," he said, drawing his arm away.

"Besides, if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. No, Dahlia, it's got to stop. We're too young to know, and besides, it would be absurd anyway. I know it's bad luck on you. Perhaps I said rather too much in the summer. But of course we'll always be good friends. I know you'll see it as I do in a little time. We've both been indiscreet, and it's better to draw back now than later--really it is."

"Do you mean it, Robin?"

She stood facing him with her hands clenched; her face was white and her eyes were blazing with fury.

"Yes, of course," he said. "I think it's time this ended----"

"Not before I've told you what I think of you," she cried. "You're a thief and a coward--you've stolen a girl's love and then you're afraid to face the world--you're afraid of what people will say. If you don't love me, you're tied to me, over and over again. You've made me promises--you made me love you--and now when your summer amus.e.m.e.nt is over you fling me aside--you and your fine relations! Oh! you gentlemen! It would be a good thing for the world if we were rid of the whole lot of you! You coward! You coward!"

He was taken aback by her fury.

"I say--Dahlia--" he stammered, "it's unfair----"

"Oh! yes!" she broke in, "unfair, of course, to you! but nothing to me--nothing to me that you stole my love--robbed me of it like a common thief--pretended to love me, promised to marry me, and now--now--Oh!

unfair! yes, always for the man, never for the girl--she doesn't count!

She doesn't matter at all. Break her heart and fling it away and n.o.body minds--it's as good as a play!"

She burst into tears, and stood with her head in her hands, sobbing as though her heart would break. It was a most distressing scene!

"Really, really, Dahlia," said Robin, feeling extremely uncomfortable (it was such a very good thing, he thought, that none of his friends could see him), "it's no use your taking it like this. I had better go--we can't do any good by talking about it now. To-morrow, when we can look at it calmly, it will seem different."

He moved to the door, but she made another attempt and put her hand timidly on his arm to stop him.

"No, no, Robin, I didn't mean what I said--not like that. I didn't know what I was saying. Oh, I love you, dear, I love you! I can't let you go like that. You don't know what it means to me. You are taking everything from me--when you rob a girl of her love, of her heart, you leave her nothing. If you go now, I don't care what happens to me--death--or worse, That's how you make a bad woman, Robin. Taking her love from her and then letting her go. You are taking her soul!"

But he placed her gently aside. "Nonsense, Dahlia," he said. "You are excited to-night. You exaggerate. You will meet a man much worthier than myself, and then you will see that I was right."

He opened the door and was gone.

She sat down at the table. She heard him open and shut the hall door, and then his steps echoed down the street, and at last there was silence. She sat at the table with her head bent, her eyes gazing at the oranges and the bananas. The house was perfectly silent, and her very heart seemed to have ceased to beat. Of course she did not realise it; it seemed to her still as though he would come back in a moment and put his arms round her and tell her that it was all a game--just to see if she had really cared. But the silence of the street and the house was terrible. It choked her, and she pulled at her frock to loosen the tightness about her throat. It was cruel of him to have gone away like that--but of course he would come back.

Only why was that cold misery at her heart? Why did she feel as if some one had placed a hand on her and drawn all her life away, and left her with no emotion or feeling--only a dull, blank, despair, like a cold fog through which no sun shone?

For she was beginning to realise it slowly. He had gone away, after telling her, brutally, frankly, that he was tired of her--that he had, indeed, never really cared for her. That was it--he had never cared for her--all those things that he had promised in the summer had been false, words without any meaning. All that idyll had been hollow, a sham, and she had made it the centre of her world.

She got up from the table and swayed a little as she stood. She pressed her hands against her forehead as though she would drive into her brain the fact that there would be no one now--no one at all--it was all a lie, a lie, a lie!

The door opened softly and Mrs. Feverel stole in. "Dahlia--what has he done?"

She looked at her as though she could not see her.

"Oh, nothing," she said slowly. "He did nothing. Only it's all over--there is not going to be any more."

And then, as though the full realisation of it had only just been borne in upon her, she sat down at the table again and burst into pa.s.sionate crying.

Mrs. Feverel watched her. "I knew it was coming, my dear--weeks ago.

You know I told you, only you wouldn't listen. Lord! it was plain enough. He'd only been playing the same game as all the rest of them."

Dahlia dried her eyes fiercely. "I'm a fool to make so much of it,"

she said. "I wasn't good enough--he said--not good enough. His people wouldn't like it and the rest--Oh! I've been a fool, a fool!"

Her mood changed to anger again. Even now she did not grasp it fully, but he had insulted her. He had flung back in her face all that she had given him. Injured pride was at work now, and for a moment she hated him so that she could have killed him gladly had he been there.

But it was no good--she could not think about it clearly; she was tired, terribly tired.

"I'm tired to death, mother," she said. "I can't think to-night."

She stumbled a little as she turned to the door.

"At least," said Mrs. Feverel, "there are the letters."

But Dahlia had scarcely heard.

"The letters?" she said.

"That he wrote in the summer. You have them safe enough?"

But the girl did not reply. She only climbed heavily up the dark stairs.

CHAPTER IV

Clare Trojan was having her breakfast in her own room. It was ten o'clock, and a glorious September morning, and the sparrows were twittering on the terrace outside as though they considered it highly improper for any one to have breakfast between four walls when Nature had provided such a splendid feast on the lawn.

Clare was reading a violent article in the _National Review_ concerning the inadequacy of our present solution of the housing problem; but it did not interest her.

If the world had only been one large Trojan family there would have been no problem. The trouble was that there were Greeks. She did dimly realise their existence, but the very thought of them terrified her. Troy must be defended, and there were moments when Clare was afraid that its defenders were few; but she blinded herself to the dangers of attack. "There are no Greeks, there _are_ no Greeks."