"
Verena said this with the same eagerness, with as determined an air of
not incurring any reproach this time. But as soon as she had spoken she
buried her head in Olive's lap.
Olive made no attempt to raise it again, and returned none of the
pressure of her hands; she only sat silent for a time, during which
Verena wondered that the idea of the episode at Cambridge, laid bare
only after so many months, should not have struck her more deeply.
Presently she saw it was because the horror of what had just happened
drew her off from it. At last Olive asked: "Is that what he told you,
off there by the water?"
"Yes"--and Verena looked up--"he wanted me to know it right away. He
says it's only fair to you that he should give notice of his intentions.
He wants to try and make me like him--so he says. He wants to see more
of me, and he wants me to know him better."
Olive lay back in her chair, with dilated eyes and parted lips. "Verena
Tarrant, what _is_ there between you? what _can_ I hold on to, what
_can_ I believe? Two hours, in Cambridge, before we went to New York?"
The sense that Verena had been perfidious there--perfidious in her
reticence--now began to roll over her. "Mercy of heaven, how you did
act!"
"Olive, it was to spare you."
"To spare me? If you really wished to spare me he wouldn't be here now!"
Miss Chancellor flashed this out with a sudden violence, a spasm which
threw Verena off and made her rise to her feet.
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