"And between what we were and what we are there is something more than time," she answered, still looking far away.
"Yes."
He was silent, and he thought of his mother, and he knew that Beatrix was thinking of her too, and of her own father. It had not occurred to him that Beatrix could resent the marriage as bitterly as he, nor that she could in any way be as great a loser by it as he was.
"Tell me why you left England," he said at last.
"And you? Why did you leave your home?"
She turned to him, and the little melancholy smile that was characteristic of her was in her face.
"I had no home left," he answered gravely.
"And had I? How could I live with them? No—how could I have lived with them, knowing what I did, even had they been ever so kind?"
"Were they unkind to you?"
Gilbert's deep eyes grew suddenly pale as they turned to hers, and his words came slowly and distinctly, like the first drops of a thunder shower.