“And you?” she said. “Have you done a great deal of climbing? Tell me about yourself, dear Jim.”
It was a dangerous note to strike and the “dear Jim” gave away her sense of insecurity. It was almost an appeal to him not to see, or, at all events, not to tell her that he saw.
“Don’t talk about me,” he said very rudely. She knew the significance of his rudeness.
“Of you, then. Don’t try to shut me out, Eppie.”
“You are trying to. You have succeeded with the rest, I suppose; but, as of course you know, you can’t succeed with me. I know too much. I care too much.”
His rough, tense voice beat down her barriers. She sat silent, oddly smiling.
He rose and came to her and stood above her, pressing the tips of his fingers heavily down upon her shoulder.
“You must tell me. I must know. I won’t stand not knowing.”
Motionless, without looking up at him, she still smiled before her.
“That--that coward has broken your heart,” he said. There were tears in his voice, and, looking up now, the smile stiffened to a resolute grimace, she saw them running down his cheeks. But her own face did not soften. With a glib dryness she answered:
“Oh--“ It was a long growl over her head.
She had looked away again, and continued in the same crisp voice: “I’d lie if I could, you may be sure. But you put it so, you look so, that I can’t. I’m at your mercy. You know what I feel, so I can’t hide it from you. I hate any one, even you, to know what I feel. Help me to hide it.”
“What has he done?” Grainger asked on the muffled, growling note.
“But something happened. You aren’t where you were when I left you. You weren’t breaking down then.”
“It’s not that. Don’t fence, to shield him. It’s not hope deferred. It’s hope dead. Something happened. What was it?”
“All that happened was that he went, when I thought that he was going to stay, forever.”
“And he told you that he didn’t love you?”
“No, there you were wrong. He told me that he did. But he saw what you saw. So what would you have asked of him?”
“That he would suffocate me. That he was the negation of everything I believed in.”
“You mean to tell me,” said Grainger, his fingers still pressing down upon her shoulder, “that it all came out,--that you had it there between you,--and then that he ran away?”