"But even without that--if, as
you seem to think, the very desolation of that girlish figure had a sort
of perversely seductive charm, making its way through his compassion to
his senses (and everything is possible)--then such words could not have
been spoken."
"They might have escaped him involuntarily," observed Marlow. "However,
a plain fact settles it. They went off together to see the ship."
"Do you conclude from this that nothing whatever was said?" I inquired.
"I should have liked to see the first meeting of their glances upstairs
there," mused Marlow. "And perhaps nothing was said. But no man comes
out of such a 'wrangle' (as Fyne called it) without showing some traces
of it. And you may be sure that a girl so bruised all over would feel
the slightest touch of anything resembling coldness. She was
mistrustful; she could not be otherwise; for the energy of evil is so
much more forcible than the energy of good that she could not help
looking still upon her abominable governess as an authority. How could
one have expected her to throw off the unholy prestige of that long
domination? She could not help believing what she had been told; that
she was in some mysterious way odious and unlovable.
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