"Yes; everything. He told me yesterday. I didn't expect him to come home last night at all; but he came—and told me what you had proposed."
"You understood, then," Davenant stammered, "that he might have to—to—go away?"
"Oh, perfectly."
"And aren't you very much appalled?"
The question was wrung from him by sheer astonishment. That she should sit calmly embroidering a sofa-cushion, with this knowledge in her heart, with this possibility hanging over her, seemed to him to pass the limits of the human. He knew there were heroic women; but he had not supposed that with all their heroism they carried themselves with such sang-froid. Before replying she took time to search in her work-basket for another skein of silk.
"Appalled is scarcely the word. Of course, it was a blow to me; but I hope I know how to take a blow without flinching."
"Oh, but one like this—"
"We're able to bear it. What makes you think we can't? If we didn't try, we should probably involve ourselves in worse."
"But how could there be worse?"
"That's what I don't know. You see, when my father told me of your kind offer, he didn't tell me what you wanted."