He met her eyes in the moonlight, and she felt as if by sheer force he held them.
"Because," he said slowly, "I have made it impossible for you to do otherwise."
"Surely that is no one's fault but your own?" she said.
"I blame no one else," said Hone.
And with that he bent again to his work as though he had been betrayed into plainer speaking than he deemed advisable, and became silent again.
Nina Perceval trailed her hand in the water and watched the ripples. Those few words of his had influenced her strangely. She had almost for the moment forgotten her enmity. But it returned upon her in the silence. She began to remember those bitter years that stretched behind her, the blind regrets with which he had filled her life—this man who had tricked her, lied to her—ay, and almost broken her heart in those far-off days of her girlhood, before she had learned to be cynical.
"And even if I did believe you," she said, "what difference would it make?"
Hone was silent for a moment. Then—"Just all the difference in the world," he said, his voice very low.
"You value my good opinion so highly?" she laughed. "And yet you will make no effort to secure it?"
He turned his eyes upon her again.