"You know. Interpret me to her now and then, when you can, with kindliness.
You understand me so much more kindly than she does."
His eyes fixed on hers, deeply flushing—"Oh, but,"—he breathed out with almost a long sigh,—"that's what I have done, you see, ever since—"
"Ever since what?"
"Since I came to understand you so much better than she does."
There was a long pause now and, the firelight flickering low, he could hardly see her face. But he recognized change in her voice as she said: "You have? I don't mean, you know, taking my side in disputes."
"I know; I don't mean that, either, though, perhaps, I can't help doing it; for," said Jack, "it's on your side that I am, you know."
The change in her voice, but controlled, kept down, she answered quickly,
"Ah, but, dear Jack, I don't want to have a side. It's that that I want her to realize. I want her to feel that my side is hers. I want you to help me in making her feel it."
"But she'll never feel it!" Jack breathed out again. Behind the barrier of the tea-table, in the flickering dimness, they were speaking suddenly with a murmuring, yet so sharp a confidence; a confidence that in broad daylight, or in complete solitude, might have seemed impossible. All sorts of things must steal out in that persuasive, that peopled yet solitary, twilight.
He knew that Valerie's eyes dwelt on him with anxiety and that it was with a faint, forced smile that she asked him: "She doesn't think that I'll ever reach her side?"