"How fagged-out you look, Miss Wellgood!" he exclaimed impulsively.
"Things aren't easy," she said in a low steady voice. "If I could have silence! But I have to listen to denunciation. You'll understand. Did he tell you what—what passed?"
"The gist of it, I think."
"Then you'll understand that I mayn't have the power to stop the denunciations, or—or the other steps that may be threatened or taken. I should like him to know that they're not my doing. And I should like him to know too that I would a thousand times sooner this had happened than that other thing which I believe he meant to happen—honestly meant to happen—but for—this accident."
"I'm with you in that, Miss Wellgood. It's far better."
"I accept what he says—an unguarded moment. But I—I thought he had a guard." She sat silent again for a minute. "There's one other thing I should like to say to him, through you. But you'll know best whether to say it or not, I think. I should like to tell him that he can't make me forget—almost that he can't make me ungrateful. He gave me, in our early days together, the first real joy I'd ever had—I expect the only perfect joy I ever shall have. What he gave then, he can't wholly take away." She looked at Andy with a faint melancholy smile. "Shall you tell him that?"
"If you leave it to me, I shan't tell him that."
"Why not?"
"You want it all over, don't you?" he asked bluntly.
"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!"