The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed to her.
"She wasn't equal to it."
"But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?" He smiled with that peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was concealing pain.
"One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same," she added, with an impulse she could not repress, "I'm sorry to be always associated in your mind with things that must be hard for you."
"You're associated in my mind with everything that's high and noble. That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have found the way."
"Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain things a little better than Evie could."
"I don't imagine that they require much explanation. I've seen from Evie's letters that—"
"That she was afraid of—the situation. She hasn't changed toward you."
"Do you mean by that that she still—cares anything about me?"
"She says she does."