“I say,” he began gruffly, in a resentful tone, careless as to what he was saying, “you might have told me earlier what you told me on Wednesday night. Why didn’t you tell me when I was at Brighton?”
“I wanted to,” she said meekly. “But I couldn’t. I really couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Instead of telling me a lie,” he went on. “I think you might have trusted me more than that.”
“A lie?” she muttered. “I told you the truth. I told you he was in prison.”
“You told me your husband was in prison,” he corrected her, in a voice meditative and judicial. He knew not in the least why he was talking in this strain.
She began to cry. At first he was not sure that she was crying. He glanced surreptitiously, and glanced away as if guilty. But at the next glance he was sure. Her eyes glistened behind the veil, and tear-drops appeared at its edge and vanished under her chin.
“You don’t know how much I wanted to tell you!” she wept.
She hid her half-veiled face in her hands. And then he was victimised by the blackest desolation. His one desire was that the scene should finish, somehow, anyhow.
“I never wrote to you because there was nothing to say. Nothing!” She sobbed, still covering her face.
“Never wrote to me—do you mean—”