The coil had fallen, and hung in
a loose pigtail down her back. Slowly, in the weakness of her apathy,
she trailed across the floor.
"Ally, what is it? Why didn't you send for me?"
"It's all right. I wanted to get up. I'm coming down to supper. You
can leave off packing that old trunk. You haven't got to go."
"Who told you I was going?"
"Nobody. I knew it." She answered Gwenda's eyes. "I don't know how
I knew it, but I did. And I know why you're going and it's all rot.
You're going because you know that if you stay Steven Rowcliffe'll
marry you, and you think that if you go he'll marry me."
"Whatever put that idea into your head?"
"Nothing put it. It came. It shows how awful you must think me if you
think I'd go and do a beastly thing like that."
"Like what?"
"Why--sneaking him away from you behind your back when I know you like
him. You needn't lie about it. You _do_ like him.
"I may be awful," she went on. "In fact I know I'm awful. But I'm
decent. I couldn't do a caddish thing like that--I couldn't really.
And, if I couldn't, there's no need for you to go."
She was sitting on the trunk where Mary had sat, and when she began to
speak she had looked down at her small hands that grasped the edge
of the lid, their fingers picking nervously at the ragged flap. They
ceased and she looked up.
And in her look, a look that for the moment was divinely lucid, Gwenda
saw Ally's secret and hidden kinship with herself.
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