Her eyes held him, enfeebled his resistance.
“I’ve got nothing to tell you, Christine,” he said, gruffly. “Nothing. I didn’t ask you to come back, but since you have come--well, I will not shut you out in the cold. You can sit by the fire if you like.”
She smiled--the little ghost of her twenty-year-old smile upon that worn and middle-aged face. He clenched his teeth at it, at something in himself.
“Have you really nothing to say to me, Harry? Not a question to ask?”
He armed himself against the pathos of her appeal.
She shut her eyes as though under a blow. Then, with a tacit admission of its justice, she smiled up at him again. Evidently, her courage was held at high tension.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” she said. “I don’t deserve to be sitting here again, after all these years. But, oh, Harry, you _could_ be generous--once, at those rare times when I could really touch the real you as I so often longed to do. Are you still hard, Harry?--still so hard?” She sighed, wearily, turned her head hopelessly once more to the fire.
He watched the play of its glow over her features, was struck by her bad colour. The coldly observant part of him noted the fact that she was, or had been, ill. Half-starved, too, added this detached professional self. Suffering, physical and mental, was stamped upon her face. He acquiesced in it, grimly. Her frivolous wickedness--he remembered the callously jaunty tone of the note she had left for him--had met just retribution. He wondered what had happened to the man.
She looked up again, answering, with a subtle perception, the question in his mind.
“He’s dead, Harry--dead years ago. Very dead. To me, he never really lived--not as you have lived, always, through every moment of my--” she paused--“my Hell.”
A sentiment of pity pricked him sharply. Poor little Christine!--she had certainly paid, and paid heavily. He repressed his commiseration, in alarm at himself. He must think--think sensibly. Did she intend to come back for good? He reacted violently against the idea. It was impossible. He would be a laughing-stock, the butt for the pointing fingers, the sly allusions, of his fellows in the Courts. His pride revolted. No, no--he must get her out again somehow, before the servants knew.