Chapter 7

HE learned in that instant two things: one being that even in so
long a time she had gathered no knowledge of his great intimacy and
his great quarrel; the other that in spite of this ignorance,
strangely enough, she supplied on the spot a reason for his stupor.
"How extraordinary," he presently exclaimed, "that we should never
have known!"

She gave a wan smile which seemed to Stransom stranger even than
the fact itself. "I never, never spoke of him."

He looked again about the room. "Why then, if your life had been
so full of him?"

"Mayn't I put you that question as well? Hadn't your life also
been full of him?"

"Any one's, every one's life who had the wonderful experience of
knowing him. I never spoke of him," Stransom added in a moment,
"because he did me - years ago - an unforgettable wrong." She was
silent, and with the full effect of his presence all about them it
almost startled her guest to hear no protest escape her. She
accepted his words, he turned his eyes to her again to see in what
manner she accepted them. It was with rising tears and a rare
sweetness in the movement of putting out her hand to take his own.
Nothing more wonderful had ever appeared to him than, in that
little chamber of remembrance and homage, to see her convey with
such exquisite mildness that as from Acton Hague any injury was
credible. The clock ticked in the stillness - Hague had probably
given it to her - and while he let her hold his hand with a
tenderness that was almost an assumption of responsibility for his
old pain as well as his new, Stransom after a minute broke out:
"Good God, how he must have used YOU!"

She dropped his hand at this, got up and, moving across the room,
made straight a small picture to which, on examining it, he had
given a slight push. Then turning round on him with her pale
gaiety recovered, "I've forgiven him!" she declared.

"I know what you've done," said Stransom "I know what you've done
for years." For a moment they looked at each other through it all
with their long community of service in their eyes. This short
passage made, to his sense, for the woman before him, an immense,
an absolutely naked confession; which was presently, suddenly
blushing red and changing her place again, what she appeared to
learn he perceived in it. He got up and "How you must have loved
him!" he cried.

"Women aren't like men. They can love even where they've
suffered."

"Women are wonderful," said Stransom. "But I assure you I've
forgiven him too."

"If I had known of anything so strange I wouldn't have brought you
here."

"So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?"

"What do you call the last?" she asked,