"
"I wasn't thinking of throwing you over, but I don't even know what you
mean. There seem to be no end of things I can't do. Hadn't you better
tell me of something that I could do? Have you any idea yourself what
you want from me?"
"You can let me look at you. You can listen to me. You can speak to me."
"Frankly, I have never shirked doing all those things, whenever you
wanted me to. You have led me . . ."
"I led you!" cried Lingard.
"Oh! It was my fault," she said, without anger. "I must have dreamed
then that it was you who came to me in the dark with the tale of your
impossible life. Could I have sent you away?"
"I wish you had. Why didn't you?"
"Do you want me to tell you that you were irresistible? How could I have
sent you away? But you! What made you come back to me with your very
heart on your lips?"
When Lingard spoke after a time it was in jerky sentences.
"I didn't stop to think. I had been hurt. I didn't think of you people
as ladies and gentlemen. I thought of you as people whose lives I held
in my hand. How was it possible to forget you in my trouble? It is your
face that I brought back with me on board my brig. I don't know why. I
didn't look at you more than at anybody else. It took me all my time to
keep my temper down lest it should burn you all up.
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