He took them in silence, scanned them, then looked up.

In a long, worthless pause their eyes met.  It was as if each looked speechlessly into the other’s heart, seeing the passions, the contradictions, the shortcomings that went to the making of both.  In that silence they drew closer together than they could have done through a torrent of words.  There was no asking of forgiveness, no elaborate confession on either side; in the deep, eloquent pause they mutually saw and mutually understood.

“When I came into the morning-room to-day,” Eve said, at last, “and saw Lillian Astrupp reading that telegram, nothing could have seemed further from me than the thought that I should follow her example.  It was not until afterwards; not until —­he came into the room; until I saw that you, as I believed, had fallen back again from what I respected to what I despised—­that I knew how human I really was.  As I watched them laugh and talk I felt suddenly that I was alone again —­terribly alone.  I—­I think—­I believe I was jealous in that moment—­” She hesitated.

“Eve!” he exclaimed.

But she broke in quickly on the word.  “I felt different in that moment.  I didn’t care about honor—­or things like honor.  After they had gone it seemed to me that I had missed something—­something that they possessed.  Oh, you don’t know what a woman feels when she is jealous!” Again she paused.  “It was then that the telegram, and the thought of Lillian’s amused smile as she had read it, came to my mind.  Feeling as I did—­acting on what I felt—­I crossed to the bureau and picked it up.  In one second I had seen enough to make it impossible to draw back.  Oh, it may have been dishonorable, it may have been mean, but I wonder if any woman in the world would have done otherwise!  I crumpled up the papers just as they were and carried them to my own room.”

From the first to the last word of Eve’s story Loder’s eyes never left her face.  Instantly she had finished his voice broke forth in irrepressible question.  In that wonderful space of time he had learned many things.  All his deductions, all his apprehensions had been scattered and disproved.  He had seen the true meaning of Lillian Astrupp’s amused indifference—­the indifference of a variable, flippant nature that, robbed of any real weapon for mischief, soon tires of a game that promises to be too arduous.  He saw all this and understood it with a rapidity born of the moment; nevertheless, when Eve ceased to speak the question that broke from him was not connected with this great discovery—­was not even suggestive of it.  It was something quite immaterial to any real issue, but something that overshadowed every consideration in the world.

“Eve,” he said, “tell me your first thought?  Your first thought after the shock and the surprise—­when you remembered me?”

There was a fresh pause, but one of very short duration; then Eve met his glance fearlessly and frankly.  The same pride and dignity, the same indescribable tenderness that had responded to his first appeal shone in her face.