"Less complex ideas about what?'
"About honor for one thing." In my goings and comings round the room I paused in front of her. "Among my friends, my real friends, you can be a coward or a deserter, just as you could be a murderer or a thief, and no one would pass judgment upon you."
"And is that ... a virtue?"
"I don't know anything about its being a virtue; but it is a consolation."
As I stood looking down on her she said, softly:
"Have I passed judgment upon you?"
"You've been a brick, Vio: you've been a heroine. The only difference I should note between you and the people to whom I'm going back is that you've suppressed your condemnation, and they didn't feel it."
"Did they ... know?"
"I can't tell you what they knew, for the reason that it wouldn't have mattered. They knew there was something wrong with me, that I was hiding something, that I was probably an outcast of good family; but they gave me a great, big affection to live in, and thought no more about it. You've given me—"
There was an extraordinarily brilliant flash of her dark eyes as she lifted them to mine.