"A whole lifetime ago you were ready to die sooner than let me see him."
"Simon, you're very——He knew, I told him."
"You told him?" I cried. "Before you told me?"
"He asked me before," said Barbara.
I did not grudge her that retort; every jot of her joy was joy to me, and her triumph my delight.
"How did I dare to tell him?" she asked herself softly. "Ah, but how have I contrived not to tell all the world? How wasn't it plain in my face?"
"It was most profoundly hidden," I assured her. Indeed from me it had been; but Barbara's wit had yet another answer.
"You were looking in another face," said she. Then, as the movement of my hands protested, remorse seized on her, and catching my hand she cried impulsively, "I'll never speak of it again, Simon."
Now I was not so much ashamed of the affair as to demand that utter silence on it; in which point lies a difference between men and women. To have wandered troubles our consciences little, when we have come to the right path again; their pride stands so strong in constancy as sometimes (I speak in trembling) even to beget an oblivion of its falterings and make what could not have been as if it had not. But now was not the moment for excuse, and I took my pardon with all gratitude and with full allowance of my offence's enormity.
Then we determined that Carford must immediately be sought, and set out for the house with intent to find him. But our progress was very slow, and the moon rose in the skies before we stepped out on to the avenue and came in sight of the house and the terrace. There was so much to tell, so much that had to slough off its old seeming and take on new and radiant apparel—things that she had understood and not I, that I had caught and she missed, wherein both of us had gone astray most lamentably and now stood aghast at our own sightlessness. Therefore never were our feet fairly in movement towards the house but a sudden—"Do you remember?" gave them pause again: then came shame that I had forgotten, or indignation that Barbara should be thought to have forgotten, and in both of these cases the need for expiation, and so forth. The moon was high in heaven when we stepped into the avenue and came in sight of the terrace.