“Mind?  What do you mean, Nigel?”

“Well, you see it makes a lot of difference in my position from the worldly point of view.”

“And you think I care about that!  I knew you did.  I knew exactly what you were thinking on the terrace!”

There was a wounded sound in her voice.  Then she added, with a sort of terribly bitter quietness: 

“But—­what else could you, or anyone, think?”

“Ruby!” he exclaimed.

He tried to seize her hand, but she would not let him.

“No, Nigel! don’t touch me now.  I—­I shall hate you if you touch me now.”

Her face was distorted with passion, and the tears stood in her eyes.

“I don’t blame you a bit,” she said.  “I should be a fool to expect anyone, even you, to believe in me after all that—­all that has happened.  But—­it is hard, sometimes it is frightfully hard, to bear all this disbelief that one can have any good in one.”

She turned hurriedly away.

“Ruby!” he said, with a passion of tenderness.

“No, no!  Leave me alone for a little.  I tell you I must be alone!” she exclaimed, as he followed her.

He stopped on the garden path and watched her go into the house.

“Beast, brute that I am!” he said to himself.

He clenched his hands.  At that moment he hated himself; he longed to strike himself down—­himself, and all men with himself—­to lay them even with the ground—­cynics, unbelievers, agents destructive of all that was good and noble.

Mrs. Armine went straight up to her room, locked the door against her maid, and gave way to a violent storm of passion, which had been determined by Nigel’s impulse to be frank, following on his news of Harwich.  With the shrewd cleverness that scarcely ever deserted her, she had forced her temper into the service of deception.  When she knew she had lost her self-control, that she must show how indignant she was, she had linked her anger to a cause with which it had nothing to do, a cause that would stir all his tenderness for her.  At the moment when she was hating him, she was teaching him to love her, and deliberately teaching him.  But now that she was alone, all that was deliberate deserted her, and, disregarding even the effect grief and anger unrestrained must have upon her appearance, she gave way, and gave way completely.

She did not come down to lunch, but towards tea-time she reappeared in the garden, looking calm, but pathetically tired, with soft and wistful eyes.

“When are you starting for the dahabeeyah?” she asked, as Nigel came anxiously, repentantly forward to meet her.

“I don’t think I’ll go at all.  I don’t want to go.  I’ll stay here and have tea with you.”

“No, you mustn’t do that.  I shall like to have tea alone to-day.”

She spoke very gently, but her manner, her eyes, and every word rebuked him.

“Then I’ll go,” he said, “if you prefer it.”