"Oh, I don't think so," Helen said earnestly. "He isn't married! Miriam meant the gentleman in the Bible."
"I see." Her glance pitied Miriam. "But this was early in the evening. Some one came in very late. Rupert, perhaps."
"No, it was me," Helen said.
"I," Mildred Caniper corrected.
"Yes. I."
"Did I hear voices?"
"Did you?" Helen returned in another tone and with an innocence that surprised herself and revealed the deceit latent in the mouth of the most truthful. It was long since she had been so near a lie and lying was ugly: it made smudges on the world; but disloyalty was no better, and though she could not have explained the debt, she felt that she owed George silence. She had to choose. He had been like a child as he fumbled over his apologies and she could not but be tender with a child. Yet only a few seconds earlier she had thought he was the tinker. Oh, why had Rupert ever told her of the tinker?
"I would rather you did not wander on the moor so late at night," Mildred Caniper said.
"But it's the best time of all."
"I would rather you did not."