"You never told me so."
"There were a lot of things I never told you."
"I tried so hard to make you."
"It was so hard not to."
"St. John," she said, "the things you didn't tell me, were they true?"
"Yes, they were true."
He had got up and knelt by her chair.
She put her hand on his head.
"St. John," she said. Should she tell him that they were not true? That he was building up a retrospective passion which had never existed? That what he supposed to have been renunciation and self-control and chivalry had in reality been a rather tactfully steered uninflammable affection? Why his voice now was far more broken up and moved than she had ever heard it before. Of course he had not been in love with her. She had never realised it as clearly as to-night. For a moment he put his face in her lap, then he kissed her hands—reverently, in memory of his great sacrifice.
"May I smoke a cigarette?" he asked.