The footman's whistle grew fainter as Napier helped her into her coat. They hadn't been alone since those hurried moments on the platform after Greta had gone. Something now in her slight awkwardness as she struggled with her coat, her increased anxiety to be off ("I ought to have gone ten minutes ago. I can always find a cab quicker than a footman") gave Napier a feeling that he had misinterpreted her avoidance. Not the new Greta-born distrust of him, but distrust of herself. His heart rose at that quick conviction. Rogers wouldn't be long, he reassured her, and then: "I wish he might, or, rather, I wish I hadn't to go back to the House with Sir William. I'd take you wherever it is you are going." He stopped suddenly.
"Would you? Would you really? That's what I've been longing to ask. _You_ wouldn't sit dumb, helpless, like me if once you'd heard Julian--"
"I'm under the impression that I _have_ 'heard Julian.'"
"No! no! not just arguing with you. I mean at one of the meetings."
"And now you're looking like that!" She turned away with nervous abruptness, but he had interposed between her and the doorknob.
"And you--have you any idea how unhappy _you_ are looking?"
"Well, why not?--if it is, as Julian says, 'such a brute of a world.'"
"_Julian_ oughtn't to think so," Napier said bitterly. "Julian has you--"
"Do you mean he hasn't?" They were both trembling.
"I mean, whether he has or hasn't, we aren't rid of the miserableness. Once you are started wrong, you can't get right, it seems. Not without--" Suddenly her eyes filled. A shower of words tumbled out in a shaken whisper: "At first--oh, for long, I thought you hardly knew I was there, at Kirklamont, in the world! Then, when you began to notice me, it was only to criticize me. Oh, I used to see you laughing; not with your mouth, with your eyes. You laughed at Julian, too, for thinking I was all right." She broke in upon his protest, which was none the less horrified for being self-convicted.
"Yes, yes; you tried to prevent Julian from caring. I could have forgiven you that," she said, with her look of indignant candor; "yes, I could _easily_ have forgiven you if you'd done it from any _nice_ reason, like jealousy. You _didn't_ do it from a nice reason." Still under her breath, she hurled it at him.