“You know that that isn’t necessary between you and me,” he said reproachfully.
“I think he would like you to see it,” she answered.
He took it then and read it through; when he had done so he handed it back again with a grave half-troubled smile.
“Considering how I, myself, was mistaken,” he said, “I don’t think that I have the right to censure him at all.”
Jill tore the note up slowly, watching the fragments intently as they fluttered from her fingers. The knowledge that her husband had misjudged her was the bitterest part of all. And yet in her heart she did not blame him; she even found excuses for him, but the pain was none the less acute because she refused to admit its reason, though no doubt it was easier borne, and would be more readily forgotten.
“I am very much afraid,” she said gently, with a slight hesitation of tone and manner, “that I, also, must have been at fault to cause two men to make the same mistake. I don’t suppose that I have any right to blame him either. I think the wisest course would be to do as he suggests—forgive everything, and forget.”
And as St. John was of the same opinion the matter ended there, and if not entirely forgotten was at least never referred to between them again.