“Perhaps,” said the young man.
“What I say to myself is this,” Antonia went on. “If he had been alive and had gone away, as you said, to Australia or Patagonia, and during his absence I had grown fond of you and fallen in love—what I say to myself is that of course I should have fought against the feeling and avoided seeing you, and when he came back I should have confessed to him what had happened. And he would have forgiven me. It would make him very unhappy; but I know that Malcolm would forgive me.”
“Right you are, my dear Tony; he would. And you’d have fallen out of love with me and gone on living happily ever after.”
She ignored his jaded lightness. “Well—isn’t it like that now? Can’t I do that now?” She stopped in the little path and her soft, exhausted face dwelt on him.
“No,” said Bevis patiently, but his own exhaustion was in his voice; “it isn’t like that now. As I’ve said, the difference is that he won’t come back; that he is dead.”
“But immortal, Bevis.”
“I believe, immortal.”
“Couldn’t I in the same way, when I find him again, confess and be forgiven?”
“You’d not need to, my child.” A certain dryness was in his voice. “He knows all about it, I imagine; and more than you do.”
“You mean that he knows and has forgiven already?”