“I don’t think I understand.”
“You don’t think you understand!” she mimicked. “And you’re not fond of her, eh? Never were fond of her, eh? You silly—to let him take her, and never tell!”
“Tell?”
She faced him, hardening her gaze. “Yes, tell—” She nodded slowly; while Joey, unobserved by either, looked up with wide, round eyes.
“Men don’t fight like that.” The words were out before it struck him that one man had, almost certainly, fought like that. Her face, however, told him nothing. She could not know. “You have never told,” he added.
“Because—” she began, but could not tell him the whole truth. And yet what he said was true. “Because you would not let me,” she muttered.
“In the churchyard, you mean—on her wedding day?”
“Before that.”
“But before that I never guessed.”
“All the same I knew what you were. You wouldn’ have let me. It came to the same thing. And if I had told—Oh, you make it hard for me!” she wailed.