"Then, Bob dear, I'm afraid I can't add anything. You see, they were her secrets—"
"Oh! Then she told you secrets!"
"Why, of course! What did you think?"
"Any other secret besides that she and I had been married?"
"Bob darling, I don't think it's fair to put me on the witness stand. She's your wife—and because she's your wife I accept her. What I know is buried here"—she smote her chest—"and if for your sake and hers I try to forget it I think you might let me."
For a few minutes he smoked in a silence broken only by the maniac cry of a loon in the distance.
"Did it occur to you," he asked at last, "that she was a very simple girl who could easily become entangled in her talk when she tried to explain things to a woman of the world?"
"No; because the things said were very simple—just statements of fact as to which there could be no misunderstanding."
"Had the statements of fact anything"—he moistened his dry lips—"anything to do with—with Hubert?"
"Some of them. But there!" She caught herself up. "You're not going to make me tell you things. I'm your mother, and if I intervene at all, it must be in the way of helping you to come together and not of putting you apart." She rose, drawing her cloak about her. "I think I must go in, dear. I'm beginning to feel the damp."