Her voice was almost listless. “I love you so much that I’m not afraid even of ending it.”
“Florence, if you knew how I need you!” How he touched her vulnerable point! “If you knew how I have lost the only faith I had in myself!”
“You have _not_!” she made passionate denial. She freed herself, and stepped back from him; but he came on until he was close in front of her as she pressed back among the ferns. He looked bewildered—furious.
“You don’t need me!” she denied him. “We have given all we can. It is different. I have nothing more for you.” She put her hands behind her.
“Florence, Florence!” He spoke her name threateningly. “That is just talk! Why didn’t you say at once you were tired of me!”
“Oh, the truth! Words! Good God, what woman ever talked reason to the man she loved!”
She gave a little, bitter shrug, as if his words had frozen her in the midst of the sun and flowers.
“_You_ have nothing to regret!” he said, savage with self-pity. “There’s no blame—Lord, I don’t _blame_ you! But why didn’t you tell me—” he stared at her, white with his dreadful realization—“why didn’t you tell me before?”
Scarcely less pale, she looked back at him. What was it that had already happened? Had everything been done too late?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO Florence everything—leaf, and wind, and the movement of her own blood—seemed to stop and harken to his steps going from her. To him the power and procession of incident were suddenly precipitated in a rending confusion, in which established custom was uprooted, faith cast down, self-confidence shaken to bits.
What went on around him had lost significance. He was among people, talking to people, looking at Florence across the table; but in this blind rage of suffering he was as indifferent to all external things as if he had been alone.
Neither Julia nor Bessie Lewis had appeared at luncheon. Julia had sent word that she would be late, to her mother’s absent-minded distraction. Mrs. Budd’s desire to rush away and fetch her fluttered before the faces of her guests like a flag of distress. In the end she was deflected by an imperative telephone that caught her just as her guests were rising. While they loitered between the dining-room and living-hall, chatting in groups, Julia, with Bessie Lewis at her heels, came down the stairs, habited, hatted, booted, drawing on her gloves, her riding-whip under her arm.