“He hasn’t much to forgive!” Bevis could not repress, with a drier smile.
“You are unkind.”
“I know. Forgive me, Tony dear; but you are tormenting. Don’t let us talk about it any more. There’s nothing to be gained by it.”
“I don’t mean to be tormenting. Isn’t it for your sake, too?”
“I can bear more,” he laughed now, “if you can assure me of that!”
“There may be a way out, Bevis; there may be a way out, although you can’t show it to me, although I can’t find it yet. Because you don’t feel as I do; and you may be right and I wrong. You do believe that everything is changed, quite changed, after we die? You do believe that it does not hurt him?”
He was aware, with a dim, a tender irony, of the so feminine impulse in her that, when she no longer found any help in him, sought help for herself in her own misconceptions of his beliefs. Irony deepened a little, and tenderness, as he set her straight.
“I don’t believe it hurts him; but I don’t believe, either, that everything is changed. It depends on what you call change.”
“You believe it’s all peace and love; that people there don’t feel in the way we do here?” She was supplicating him.
“You might put it like that, perhaps,” he acquiesced, “though even here we feel peace and love sometimes.” And, glancing up at the house, as she had laid her hand on his arm, he added: “Miss Latimer is looking out at us. Don’t take your hand off quickly, all the same.”