“You are fond of somebody else?”

It was between an exclamation and an inquiry.  Bending forward, Olga awaited the reply as if her life depended upon it.

“I am fond of no one—­in that sense.”

Irene’s look was so fearless, her countenance so tranquil in its candour, that the agitated girl grew quieter.

“It isn’t because you are thinking of someone else that you can’t marry Mr. Jacks?”

“I am thinking simply of myself.  I am afraid to marry him.  No thought of the kind you mean has entered my head.”

“But how will it be explained to everybody?”

“By telling the truth—­always the best way out of a difficulty.  I shall take all the blame on myself, as I ought.”

“And you will live on here, just as usual, seeing people——?”

“No, I don’t think I could do that.  Most likely I shall go for a time to Paris.”

Olga’s relief expressed itself in a sigh.

“In all this,” continued Irene, “there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay here.  Everything, you may be sure, will be settled very quietly.  My father is a reasonable man.”

After a short reflection, Olga said that she could not yet make up her mind.  And therewith ended their dialogue.  Each was glad to go apart into privacy, to revolve anxious thoughts, and to seek rest.

That her father was “a reasonable man,” Irene had always held a self-evident proposition.  She had never, until a few days ago, conceived the possibility of a conflict between his ideas of right and her own.  Domestic discord was to her mind a vulgar, no less than an unhappy, state of things.  Yet, in the step she was now about to take, could she feel any assurance that Dr. Derwent would afford her the help of his sympathy—­or even that he would refrain from censure?  Reason itself was on her side; but an otherwise reasonable man might well find difficulty in acknowledging it, under the circumstances.

The letter to Arnold Jacks was already composed; she knew it by heart, and had but to write it out.  In the course of a sleepless night, this was done.  In the early glimmer of a day of drizzle and fog, the letter went to post.

There needed courage—­yes, there needed courage—­on a morning such as this, when the skyless atmosphere weighed drearily on heart and mind, when hope had become a far-off thing, banished for long months from a grey, cold world, to go through with the task which Irene had set herself.  Could she but have slept, it might have been easier for her; she had to front it with an aching head, with eyes that dazzled, with blood fevered into cowardice.

Dr. Derwent was plainly in no mood for conversation.  His voice had been seldom heard during the past week.  At the breakfast-table he read his letters, glanced over the paper, exchanged a few sentences with Eustace, said a kind word to Olga; when he rose, one saw that he hoped for a quiet morning in his laboratory.