“Heavenly music—and my happiness. I lost a bar—a whole bar, I tell you. I’ll never forgive him. I can’t get it back.”
“And there are others,” Charles went on. “I never forget them. I meet them in the streets and they look horrible—like beetles.” “I believe you’re mad,” Henrietta said earnestly. “It’s not sense.”
“What is sense?” Henrietta could not tell him. She looked at him, a little afraid, but excited by this proximity to danger. And I thought you would understand.”
“Of course I do.” She could not bear to let go of anything which might do her credit. “I do. But you exaggerate. And Mr. Sales—” She hesitated, and in doing so she remembered to be angry with Charles Batty for maligning him. “How can you judge Mr. Sales?” she asked with scorn. “He is a man.” “And what am I?” Charles demanded.
“Yes”—his face twisted curiously—“I suppose if I shot things and chased them, you’d like me better. But I can’t—not even for that, but perhaps, some day—” He seemed to lose himself in the vagueness of his thoughts.
She finished his sentence gaily, for after all, it was absurd to quarrel with him. “Some day we’ll go to a concert.”
He recovered himself. “More than that,” he said. He nodded his head with unexpected vigour. “You’ll see.”
She gazed at him. It was wonderful to think of all the things that might happen to a person who was only twenty-one, but she hastily corrected her thoughts. What could happen to her? In a few short days events had rushed together and exhausted themselves at their source! There was nothing left. She said good-bye to Charles and thought him foolish not to offer to accompany her. She said, “It’s a very long way to Sales Hall,” and he answered, “Oh, you’ll meet that man somewhere, potting at rabbits.”
“Do you think so? I hope he won’t shoot me.” And she saw herself stretched on the ground, wounded, dying, with just enough force to utter words he could never forget—words that would change his whole life. She was willing to sacrifice herself and she said good-bye to Charles again, and sorrowfully, as though she were already dead. She tried to plan her dying words, but as she could not hit on satisfactory ones, she contented herself with deciding that whether she were wounded or not, she would try to introduce the subject of Aunt Rose; and as she went she looked out hopefully for a tall figure with a gun under its arm.