Prudence did not answer, did not raise her head; she dared not meet his eyes. He loosened her hands abruptly and stood up.
“Some one’s got before me,” he said in odd constrained tones. “Is that it?”
He turned deliberately away, and remained rigid and outwardly composed, staring at a hideous old print on the wall, without consciously seeing what he looked at. Prudence stood up also, and approached him, a white-robed quiet figure, in the stillness of the dimly-lit room. She put one hand to her throat and nervously fingered the pearls which Edward Morgan had given her.
“Yes, I’m married,” she said, “to Mr Morgan.”
“That man!” He turned on her angrily. “He’s old enough to be your father.”
“My mother married a man much older than herself,” she answered quietly. “They were very happy.”
He emitted a short hard laugh.
“So that’s the end of my hopes,” he said. “Fool that I was! I thought you cared for me.”
She moved nearer to him, and something of her forced control left her in that moment of intense emotion. She laid a hand swiftly on his arm; and he read the despair and the longing in her saddened eyes.
“You know I cared,” she said. “You know I care still. I didn’t understand. I thought you had forgotten. I was not sure how much you really meant. You went away; and life was very difficult. I had to get away from it all—I had to. You had gone. I believed that I should never see you again. If I’d known you remembered, I would have borne with things; I would have waited all my life, if necessary, until you came back to me. And now you’ve come—and it’s too late. It’s too late.”