The other man pondered over the words a little while. Then, with a smile that had something almost tender in it, he looked up at his friend again:
"I am afraid you will have to explain a little more, Ray."
Bethune shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The colour mounted to his face. He stared down at English, wistfully.
"It's a bit hard to explain," he said, "yet I'd like you to know—that diary, those letters of yours, I had to have them, extracts of them, for the work, you see.... Well——"
Here came a pause of such length that English was fain to repeat:
"Well?"
Then Bethune blurted it out:
"She had never read them——"
"Ah!"
"She never wanted to read them. Oh!"—quickly, "it's not that she didn't care."