“You’d have had to live my life to know what those last words mean to me,” he said, “how happy they make me.”
“But I know better than you think,” she answered. “For my life has not been sheltered, as are the lives of most women. It has had temptations and defeats.”
He turned his eyes quickly away, but not so quickly that she failed to catch the look of fear in them. “What are you thinking?” she asked earnestly. “Dear, if there are doubts, may they not come again? I saw in your eyes just then—what was it?”
“Do not ask me. I must fight that alone and conquer it.”
“No—you must tell me,” she said, resolutely. “I feel that I have a right to know.”
“It was nothing—a lie that I heard. I’d not shame myself and insult you by repeating it.”
He looked at her appealingly, saw that she was trembling. “You know that I did not believe it?” he said, catching her hand. But she drew away.
“Was it about me and—Marlowe?” she asked.
“But I knew that it was false,” he protested.
She looked at him unflinchingly. “It was true,” she said. “We were—everything—each to the other.”