Montgomery tried to rouse her: 'Tell me,' he said, 'tell me why you couldn't marry anyone but Dick.'
The sound of his voice startled her, and then, in a moment of sudden naturalness, she answered:
'Because I'm in the family way.'
'Then there's nothing else for him to do but to marry you.'
She knew he was at that moment his own proper executioner, but the intensity of her own feelings did not leave her time for pity.
Why after all shouldn't she marry Dick? Why hadn't she asked for this reparation before? 'I dare say you're right,' she said. 'When I tell him——'
'What! haven't you told him yet?' Montgomery cried.
'No,' Kate answered timidly, 'I was afraid he wouldn't care to hear it.'
'Then you must do so at once,' Montgomery said, and the poor vagrant musician, whom nobody had ever loved, said: 'I will speak to him about it the first time I get a chance. It would be wicked of him not to. He couldn't refuse even if he didn't love you, which he does.'
The last streak of yellow had died out of the sky telling of the day that had gone by, and in a deep tranquillity of mind Kate inhaled the sweetness of her luck as a convalescent might a bunch of freshly culled violets.