“How long? Since I’ve loved you? Oh—since before Malcolm’s death, I’m afraid.”
It was what she had feared; he saw that, and that it hurt her. Yet it pleased her, too.
“I never guessed,” she said.
He laughed. “Rather not! How could you have guessed?”
“Women do—these things.”
“Perhaps you are less clever than other women, then, or I more clever than other men.”
“I don’t think I’m less clever than other women,” said Antonia, and a smile just touched her lips; another evidence of that straightness in her. She was willing to smile, even though smiling might be misunderstood. Yes, more than anything, perhaps, it was her genuineness he cherished.
“You’re cleverer than most,” he assured her. “Far. But I’m cleverer than most men.”
“We are a wonderful pair!” she exclaimed, and he agreed: “We are indeed.”
“And why was it?” she went on, more happily now, for, another precious point, and it seemed more than anything else to pair them, they were happy with each other. Apart from her woman’s craving to feel her power over him, apart from his definitely amorous condition, they were comrades, and it crossed his mind, oddly, at the moment of thinking it, that this could not have been said of Antonia and Malcolm. Their relation had been that, specially, of man and woman, lover and beloved. He doubted, really, whether Antonia would have cared much about Malcolm had he not been a man and a lover. Whereas, had he himself been another woman, Antonia, he felt sure, would have made a friend of him. These reflections took him far from her question, and before the vague musing of his look she repeated it in an altered form. “Why did you begin—after having known me so long without?”