“I have.”
“And it's something dreadful, I know!” she said, wrinkling her brows with a pretty terror. “Couldn't you pretend you had told it to me, and let us go on just the same? Couldn't you, Kla'uns? Tell me!”
“I am afraid I couldn't,” he said, with a sad smile.
“Is it about yourself, Kla'uns? You know,” she went on with cheerful rapidity, “I know everything about you—I always did, you know—and I don't care, and never did care, and it don't, and never did, make the slightest difference to me. So don't tell it, and waste time, Kla'uns.”
“It's not about me, but about my wife!” he said slowly.
Her expression changed slightly
“Oh, her!” she said after a pause. Then, half-resignedly, “Go on, Kla'uns.”
He began. He had a dozen times rehearsed to himself his miserable story, always feeling it keenly, and even fearing that he might be carried away by emotion or morbid sentiment in telling it to another. But, to his astonishment, he found himself telling it practically, calmly, almost cynically, to his old playmate, repressing the half devotion and even tenderness that had governed him, from the time that his wife, disguised as the mulatto woman, had secretly watched him at his office, to the hour that he had passed through the lines. He withheld only the incident of Miss Faulkner's complicity and sacrifice.
“And she got away, after having kicked you out of your place, Kla'uns?” said Susy, when he had ended.
Clarence stiffened beside her. But he felt he had gone too far to quarrel with his confidante.