"Was it because you wanted to separate me from a child I was fond of?"
"Yes."
"And your idea was that because her mother was a flighty woman with bad taste and the wrong surrounding her poor little girl would contaminate me?"
"It was because her mother was a light woman and all her friends were like her. And your affection for the child was not like a child's affection."
"No, it wasn't," he said and he leaned forward with his forehead in his hands.
"I wanted to put an end to it before it was too late. I saw nothing but pain in it for you. It filled me with heart-broken fear to think of the girl such a mother and such a life would make."
"She was such a little thing—" said Donal, "—such a tender mite of a thing! She's such a little thing even now."
"Is she?" said Helen.
Now she knew he would not tell her. And she was right. Up to that afternoon there had always been the chance that he would. Night after night he had been on the brink of telling her of the dream. Only as the beauty and wonder of it grew he had each day given himself another day, and yet another and another. But he had always thought the hour would come and he had been sure she would not grudge him a moment he had held from her. Now he shut everything within himself.