But I came back to tell some one about it--I had to, I had to.
I had to wait until father and Audrey went away. I knew they'd hate to
see me--she was my stepmother, you know, and she always loathed me, and
he never cared. In East Africa I used to stay awake at night thinking
that I might die, and that no one in England would ever care--no one
would know how I had loved her. It was worse than dying to think that."
"But why couldn't you come back to Green Gardens--why couldn't you make
them see, Stephen?"
"Why, what was there to see? When they sent me down from Oxford for that
dirty little affair, I was only nineteen--and they told me I had
disgraced my name and Green Gardens and my country--and I went mad with
pride and shame, and swore I'd drag their precious name through the dirt
of every country in the world. And I did--and I did."
His head was buried in his arms, but Daphne heard. It seemed strange
indeed to her that she felt no shrinking and no terror; only great pity
for what he had lost, great grief for what he might have had. For a
minute she forgot that she was Daphne, the heedless and gay-hearted, and
that he was a broken and an evil man. For a minute he was a little lad,
and she was his lost mother.
"Don't mind, Stephen," she whispered to him, "don't mind.
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