o prevent me. That
was what I was out against. I'd be out against it tomorrow and the next
day, and for as long as you keep up that attitude."

"And yet--you said you loved me."

"So I did. So I do. But I'm out against that too."

"Good Lord, against what?"

"Against your exploiting my love for your purposes."

"My poor dear child, what do you suppose I wanted?"

She had reached the uttermost limit of absurdity, and in that moment she
became to him helpless and pathetic.

"I knew there was going to be the most infernal row and I wanted to keep
you out of it. Look here, you'd have thought me a rotter if I hadn't,
wouldn't you?

"Of course you would. And there's another thing. You weren't straight
about it. You never told me you were going."

"I never told you I wasn't."

"I don't care, Dorothy; you weren't straight. You ought to have told
me."

"How could I tell you when I knew you'd only go trying to stop me and
getting yourself arrested."

"Not me. They wouldn't have touched me."

"How was I to know that? If they had I should have dished you. And I'd
have stayed away rather than do that. I didn't tell Michael or Nicky or
Father for the same reason."

"You'd have stayed at home rather than have dished me? Do you really
mean that?"

"Of course I mean it. And I meant it. It's you," she said, "who don't
care."

"How do you make that out?"

He really wanted to know. He really wanted, if it were possible, to
understand her.

"I make it out this way. Here have I been through the adventure and the
experience of my life. I was in the thick of the big raid; I was four
weeks shut up in a prison cell; and you don't care; you're not
interested. You never said to yourself, 'Dorothy was in the big raid, I
wonder what happened to her?' or 'Dorothy's in prison, I wonder how
she's feeling?' You didn't care; you weren't interested.

"If it had happened to you, I couldn't have thought of anything else, I
couldn't have got it out of my head. I should have been wondering all
the time what you were feeling; I couldn't have rested till I knew. It
would have been as if I was in prison myself. And now, when I've come
out, all you think of is how you can rag and score off me."

She was sitting beside him on the green bank of the lane. Her hands were
clasped round her knees. One knickerbockered knee protruded through the
three-cornered rent in her skirt; she stared across the road, a long,
straight stare that took no h