"Oh, nothing! One must be with Mr. Pruyn constantly—live in his house—to understand him. You can always count on his being kinder than he seems at first, or on the surface. During the last months I was with Dorothea I could see plainly enough that in the end she would get her way."
He paused abruptly in his walk and confronted her.
"Then, for Heaven's sake," he demanded, "why didn't you tell me that before?"
"You never asked me. I couldn't go around shouting it out for nothing. Besides, it was only my opinion, in which, after all, I am quite likely to be wrong."
"But quite likely to be right."
"I suppose so. Naturally, I should have told you," she went on, humbly, "if I had thought that you wanted to hear; but how was I to know that? One doesn't talk about other people's private affairs unless one is invited. In any case, it doesn't matter now. A man who can cut the Gordian knot as you can doesn't care to hear that there's a way by which it might have been unravelled."
"I'm not so sure about that. There are cases in which the longest way round is the shortest way home, and if—"
"But I didn't suppose you would consider so cautious a route as that."
"I shouldn't for myself; but, you see, I have to think of Dorothea."
"But I've already told you that there's no occasion for that. If Dorothea has made her choice with her eyes open—"