hours--to talk to you about your soul? You ought to have known I wasn't
that sort. . . . I had something better to do. But if you think I was
totally blind . . ."

He perceived in a flash that he could remember an infinity of
enlightening occurrences. He could recall ever so many distinct
occasions when he came upon them; he remembered the absurdly interrupted
gesture of his fat, white hand, the rapt expression of her face, the
glitter of unbelieving eyes; snatches of incomprehensible conversations
not worth listening to, silences that had meant nothing at the time
and seemed now illuminating like a burst of sunshine. He remembered all
that. He had not been blind. Oh! No! And to know this was an exquisite
relief: it brought back all his composure.

"I thought it beneath me to suspect you," he said, loftily.

The sound of that sentence evidently possessed some magical power,
because, as soon as he had spoken, he felt wonderfully at ease; and
directly afterwards he experienced a flash of joyful amazement at
the discovery that he could be inspired to such noble and truthful
utterance. He watched the effect of his words. They caused her to glance
to him quickly over her shoulder. He caught a glimpse of wet eyelashes,
of a red cheek with a tear running down swiftly; and then she turned
away again and sat as before, covering her face with her hands.

"You ought to be perfectly frank with me," he said, slowly.

"You know everything," she answered, indistinctly, through her fingers.

"This letter. . . . Yes . . . but . . ."

"And I came back," she exclaimed in a stifled voice; "you know
everything."

"I am glad of it--for your sake," he said with impressive gravity. He
listened to himself with solemn emotion. It seemed to him that something
inexpressibly momentous was in progress within the room, that every
word and every gesture had the importance of events preordained from
the beginning of all things, and summing up in their finality the whole
purpose of creation.

"For your sake," he repeated.

Her shoulders shook as though she had been sobbing, and he forgot
himself in the contemplation of her hair. Suddenly he gave a start, as
if waking up, and asked very gently and not much above a whisper--

"Have you been meeting him often?"

"Never!" she cried into the palms of her hands.

This answer seemed for a moment to take from him the power of speech.
His lips moved for some time before any sound came.

"You pr