“You might explain, I think.”

An evil little smile crossed her face.

“You can do that.  I am in the dark.”

“I don’t in the least understand what you mean.”

“Don’t you?” There was something deadly in her utter disregard of him, while her fingers moved swiftly about her dark, shining hair—­ something so appallingly sudden in this hostility that Summerhay felt a peculiar sensation in his head, as if he must knock it against something.  He sat down on the side of the bed.  Was it that letter?  But how?  It had not been opened.  He said: 

“What on earth has happened, Gyp, since I went up yesterday?  Speak out, and don’t keep me like this!”

She turned and looked at him.

“Don’t pretend that you’re upset because you can’t kiss me!  Don’t be false, Bryan!  You know it’s been pretence for months.”

Summerhay’s voice grew high.

“I think you’ve gone mad.  I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes, you do.  Did you get a letter yesterday marked ’Immediate’?”

Ah!  So it was that!  To meet the definite, he hardened, and said stubbornly: 

“Yes; from Diana Leyton.  Do you object?”

“No; only, how do you think it got back to you from here so quickly?”

He said dully: 

“I don’t know.  By post, I suppose.”

“No; I put it in your letter-box myself—­at half-past five.”

Summerhay’s mind was trained to quickness, and the full significance of those words came home to him at once.  He stared at her fixedly.

“I suppose you saw us, then.”

“Yes.”

He got up, made a helpless movement, and said: 

“Oh, Gyp, don’t!  Don’t be so hard!  I swear by—­”

Gyp gave a little laugh, turned her back, and went on coiling at her hair.  And again that horrid feeling that he must knock his head against something rose in Summerhay.  He said helplessly: 

“I only gave her tea.  Why not?  She’s my cousin.  It’s nothing!  Why should you think the worst of me?  She asked to see my chambers.  Why not?  I couldn’t refuse.”

“Your empty chambers?  Don’t, Bryan—­it’s pitiful!  I can’t bear to hear you.”

At that lash of the whip, Summerhay turned and said: 

“It pleases you to think the worst, then?”

Gyp stopped the movement of her fingers and looked round at him.

“I’ve always told you you were perfectly free.  Do you think I haven’t felt it going on for months?  There comes a moment when pride revolts—­that’s all.  Don’t lie to me, please!”

“I am not in the habit of lying.”  But still he did not go.  That awful feeling of encirclement, of a net round him, through which he could not break—­a net which he dimly perceived even in his resentment to have been spun by himself, by that cursed intimacy, kept from her all to no purpose—­beset him more closely every minute.  Could he not make her see the truth, that it was only her he really loved?  And he said: