“I was not angry—offended,” she said in a low voice.
“Weren’t you?” he said, gratefully. “I thought you were—you left me without a word.”
“I— But what does it matter?” she broke off, with a kind of weary impatience. “It is all so long ago, it is as if it had never happened. Why do you talk of it, and bring back the past?”
She spoke almost fiercely, and Norman was filled with remorse.
“You’re quite right,” he said. “I’m an idiot to go back to it. I beg your pardon. As you say, what does it matter? You are married now, and to the best fellow in the world. There’s no one like Trafford—no one—and you are sure to be happy.”
“Yes,” she said, quietly, “I am sure to be happy.” Then she laughed. “Is any one in the wide world quite happy? I doubt it. Are you?”
Norman started.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “But why did you say that? You spoke as if—oh! it’s stupid of me, of course,” he laughed apologetically—“as if you weren’t quite happy.”
“That would be so very ridiculous and impossible, wouldn’t it?” she said, with a mirthless smile.
“Well, I think it would,” he said, candidly. “With Trafford for a husband and everybody loving you”—he colored and stammered as a man does when he speaks of love.