"I suppose if I were a well-balanced sort of person," Katharine went on, "with the regulation mind which a regulation woman is supposed to have, I ought not to have allowed myself to think twice of him—him so recently bereaved of his wife. And, having allowed it, I ought to be prepared to receive the reproaches of all the British matrons in the world. I know all that, and yet I have not been able to help myself, Willy, though I've been ashamed, too."
"There was no reason for you to be ashamed," he said. "She had died and gone her way before you even saw him. Don't be miserable about that, Kath. You could not do anything mean or horrible if you tried till Doomsday."
"How you believe in me, Willy!" she exclaimed. "That makes me ashamed. But it is a great comfort, too."
"Kath," he said sadly, "I knew that you loved him when you spoke up for him to cousin Julia. Your face told me that."
And then there was a silence between them. Willy had lit a cigar, and he walked up and down the studio, his eyes fixed on the floor. At last he raised his head, and stood still in front of her.
"And what are you going to do now?" he asked.
"Oh, I am going to gather myself together somehow," she replied, with something of her old vivacity. "One has to live."
"Yes, yes, you must do that, and you must take comfort and courage," he said. "He cannot forget you."
"But Willy," she cried, as though in sudden pain; "but he is a man sad and overburdened—a man with a broken spirit—perhaps if things had been different—but now——"