May I marry someone else, if I want to, or do you say not?
I.R."
Gerard laid down the card and regarded, troubled, his companion's straight shoulders and the back of his erect head, the only view afforded as Corrie stood before his mirror employing a pair of military brushes upon his unruly blond hair.
"I did not know that the affair—that matters were so far arranged between you and your cousin," he said.
He spoke with hesitation, uncertain of how to venture upon a subject never before broached between them, yet feeling speech tacitly invited. In the stress of his own suffering at the time following the accident, preoccupied by the witnessing of Corrie's hard punishment of dishonor and grief and his struggle to fall no lower under it, he had forgotten that the boy-man also had to bear the loss of the girl upon whom he had spent his first love. For it required no deep insight to recognize that Isabel Rose was not the type of woman who is a refuge in time of disaster.
But the embarrassment was his alone; Corrie answered without confusion:
"We were engaged, yes. But that is ended. She had no need to write. She might have known, or have taken it for granted."
Gerard studied the view presented of his companion, striving to draw some conclusion from pose or tone. He had no mind to have his work of months marred and his driver distracted by an interlude of useless sentimentality; the temptation to congratulate Corrie upon his freedom from an unsuitable marriage was almost too strong. But what he actually said was quite different, and escaped from his lips without consideration of its effect.
"I should not have supposed your cousin had so fine and strict a sense of honor."