“What have I done? . . .  Tell me!  What? . . .”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Ah!  You see . . . you can’t . . .” he began, triumphantly, walking away; then suddenly, as though he had been flung back at her by something invisible he had met, he spun round and shouted with exasperation: 

“What on earth did you expect me to do?”

Without a word she moved slowly towards the table, and, sitting down, leaned on her elbow, shading her eyes with her hand.  All that time he glared at her watchfully as if expecting every moment to find in her deliberate movements an answer to his question.  But he could not read anything, he could gather no hint of her thought.  He tried to suppress his desire to shout, and after waiting awhile, said with incisive scorn: 

“Did you want me to write absurd verses; to sit and look at you for 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.