’Perhaps, but isn’t it quite true?  It was not said in so many words, but you knew I meant it, and but for a quixotic scruple of yours we should have been married.  I remember asking you what we were making ourselves miserable about, since we both cared so much.  It was at Versailles, the last time we walked together, and we had stopped, and I was digging little round holes in the road with my parasol.  I’m not going to ask you again to marry me, so there is no reason in the world why you should behave differently to me if you have fallen in love with some one else.’

‘I’m not in love with any one,’ said Lushington sharply.

’Then something you have heard about me has changed you in spite of what you say, and I have a right to know what it is, because I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of.’

‘I’ve not heard a word against you,’ he answered, almost angrily.  ’Why do you imagine such things?’

’Because I’m honest enough to own that your friendship has meant a great deal to me, even at a distance; and as I see that it has broken its neck at some fence or other, I’m natural enough to ask what the jump was like!’

He would not answer.  He only looked at her suddenly for an instant, with a slight pinching of the lids, and his blue eyes glittered a little; then he turned away with a displeased air.

‘Am I just or not?’ Margaret asked, almost sternly.

‘Yes, you are just,’ he said, for it was impossible not to reply.

’And do you think it is just to me to change your manner altogether, without giving me a reason?  I don’t!’

‘You will force me to say something I would rather not say.’

‘That is what I am trying to do,’ Margaret retorted.

‘Since you insist on knowing the truth,’ answered Lushington, yielding to what was very like necessity, ’I think you are very much changed since I saw you last.  You do not seem to me the same person.’

For a moment Margaret looked at him with something like wonder, and her lips parted, though she said nothing.  Then they met again and shut very tight, while her brown eyes darkened till they looked almost black; she turned a shade paler, too, and there was something almost tragic in her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lushington said, watching her, ’but you made me tell you.’

‘Yes,’ she answered slowly.  ’I made you tell me, and I’m glad I did.  So I have changed as much as that, have I?  In two years!’

She folded her hands on the little shelf of the empty music desk, bent far forwards and looked down between the polished wooden bars at the strings below, as if she were suddenly interested in the mechanism of the piano.

Lushington turned his eyes to the darkening windows, and both sat thus in silence for some time.

‘Yes,’ she repeated at last, ’I’m glad I made you tell me.  It explains everything very well.’

Still Lushington said nothing, and she was still examining the strings.  Her right hand stole to the keys, and she pressed down one note so gently that it did not strike; she watched the little hammer that rose till it touched the string and then fell back into its place.