Mounted on her white horse, like some mature Joan of Arc, she glanced down on him. Her face was expressionless but for its usual look of dauntless fortitude. She was thinking, "At last I shall have to speak to him, and it makes no difference to me whether I speak to him or not." It was a quarter of a century since she had driven home with him that February afternoon. A quarter of a century, and she had not forgotten! Well, when you have only the solitude to distract you, your memory is obliged to be long!
"I am not afraid," she replied in level tones, after she had dismounted and tethered Snowbird to the branch of a tree. "Are you?"
While he could wrap himself in his professional manner, it occurred to her that he was not without dignity. Even though there were only the rags of it left, he was less at her mercy than he would have been in the character of a remembered lover. For an instant it seemed to her that he waited for her question to sink in. Then he answered with the sound of a laugh that had been bitten back.
"I? No. What have I to fear?"
Her smile was as sharp as a blade. "There is always something, isn't there, even if it is only the memory of fear?"
"You think, then, that I was always a coward?" Yes, he was sober enough now, restrained by those shreds of professional responsibility which was the only responsibility he had ever acknowledged.
She laughed. "I stopped thinking of you twenty-five years ago."
"I know." He looked as if he were impressed by her words. "You took the best man, after all. There was more in Nathan than anybody realized."
"Every one says that now."
"Well, it's true even if every one says it. You married a good man."