“Yes, I think you are right,” she said after a pause, “and not only because Michael Herne has been something like a great man. It’s more than that. Their pride has gone out of them; their youth and their innocence have gone out of them. They have heard the truth and they know it is true. And there’s one of them about whom I am very unhappy.”
He looked at her earnestly and said, “Well, of course I’m sorry for a lot of them in a way; but do you mean–”
“I mean Rosamund,” she answered lowering her voice. “I think it’s the most grim and grand and dreadful thing that ever happened to anybody; much worse than anything that ever happened to us.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” he said.
“Of course you don’t,” she replied.
He looked at her in a puzzled way; and she broke out with a kind of passion.
“Of course you don’t understand! I know it has been hard for you; and it has been hard enough for me. But we haven’t gone through what they have gone through–what she is going through. We parted because each of us believed the other was attacking something good; but we didn’t, thank God, ever have to attack each other. You didn’t have to stand up and abuse my father; and I didn’t have to sit silent and hear it. It wasn’t you who were directly individually cursing me and mine; it wasn’t you, of all men, whom I had to hear saying hateful things about my own home. I don’t know what I should have done. I think I should have simply died. What do you suppose she is doing?”
“I’m awfully sorry,” he answered, “but I really do not know exactly what you are talking about. Who is she? Do you mean Rosamund Severne?”
“Of course I mean Rosamund Severne,” she cried angrily, “and he would not even leave her name. How do you suppose I should have liked that? What are you staring at? Do you really mean that you don’t know that Rosamund and Michael Herne are in love with each other?”
“I don’t seem to know much,” he said, “but if that’s true of course I see what you mean.”