If
you had been any other man, I believe I should have given you a broken
head for your pains. But you are so damnably courteous, as well as such
an unutterable fool!" He broke off with a hard laugh and a savage kick
at the coals in front of him. "I couldn't see myself doing it," he said,
"humbug as you are."
"And so you took this method of making me suffer?" Babbacombe suggested,
his voice very quiet and even.
"You may say so if it satisfies you," said West, without turning.
"It does not satisfy me!" There was a note of sternness in the steady
rejoinder. "It satisfies me so little that I insist upon an explanation.
Turn round and tell me what you mean."
But West stood motionless and silent, as though hewn in granite.
Babbacombe waited with that in his face which very few had ever seen
there. At last, as West remained stubborn, he spoke again:
"I suppose you have found out my original reason for giving you a fresh
start in life, and you resent my having kept it a secret."
"I resent the reason." West tossed the words over his shoulder as though
he uttered them against his will.
"Are you sure even now that you know what that reason was?" Babbacombe
asked.
"I am sure of one thing!" West spoke quickly, vehemently, as a man
shaken by some inner storm. "Had I been in your place--had the woman I
wanted to marry asked me to bring back into her life some worthless
scamp to whom she had taken a sentimental fancy when she was scarcely
out of the schoolroom, I'd have seen him damned first, and myself
too--had I been in your place.
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