The night before she had slept better than she had done for the past ten
nights. Both youth and weariness will assert themselves in the end
against the tyranny of nerve-racking stress. She had slept but she woke
up with her eyes full of tears. There were no traces of them when she
met him in the shabby little parlour downstairs. She had swallowed them
up. She was not going to let him see. She felt bound in honour to
accept the situation for ever and ever unless . . . Ah, unless . . . She
dissembled all her sentiments but it was not duplicity on her part. All
she wanted was to get at the truth; to see what would come of it.
She beat him at his own honourable game and the thoroughness of her
serenity disconcerted Anthony a bit. It was he who stammered when it
came to talking. The suppressed fierceness of his character carried him
on after the first word or two masterfully enough. But it was as if they
both had taken a bite of the same bitter fruit. He was thinking with
mournful regret not unmixed with surprise: "That fellow Fyne has been
telling me the truth.
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