"It was
something," she ended towards Bushwick, with a catch in her breath,
"that you had to know."
"Yes," he answered, tonelessly.
"And now"--she attempted a little forlorn playfulness--"don't you think he
gave me what I deserved?"
Bushwick rose up and took her hand under his arm, keeping his left hand
upon hers.
"He! Who?"
"Mr. Verrian."
"I don't know any Mr. Verrian. Come, you'll take cold here."
He turned his back on Verrian, who fancied a tremor in her hat, as if she
would look round at him; but then, as if she divined Bushwick's
intention, she did not look round, and together they left him.
It was days before Verrian could confess himself of the fact to his
mother, who listened with the justice instinctive in her. She still had
not spoken when he ended, and he said, "I have thought it all over, and I
feel that he did right. He did the only thing that a man in love with
her could do. And I don't wonder he's in love with her. Yes"--he stayed
his mother, imperatively--"and such a man as he, though he ground me in
the dirt and stamped on me, I will say, it, is worthy of any woman. He
can believe in a woman, and that's the first thing that's needed to make
a woman like her, true. I don't envy his job." He was speaking
self-contradictorily, irrelevantly, illogically, as a man thinks.
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