"
Again she laughed nervously. "And I thought the indifference
would last forever. If one lives in a groove for years, one
gets frozen up; I never felt more frozen than on the night Mr.
Fraide spoke to me of you--asked me to use my influence; then,
on that night--"
"Yes. On that night?" Loder's voice was tense.
But her excitement had suddenly fallen. Whether his glance
had quelled it or whether the force of her feelings had worked
itself out it was impossible to say, but her eyes had lost
their resolution. She stood hesitating for a moment, then she
turned and moved to the mantel-piece.
"That night you found me--changed?" Loder was insistent.
"Changed--and yet not changed." She spoke reluctantly, with
averted head.
"And what did you think?"
Again she was silent; then again a faint excitement tinged her
cheeks.
"I thought--" she began. "It seemed--" Once more she paused,
hampered by her own uncertainty, her own sense of puzzling
incongruity. "I don't know why I speak like this," she went
on at last, as if in justification of herself, "or why I want
to speak.
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