“I was twenty-four when I married,” she said. “People then thought that was quite old.”
He turned away his head, unable to reply, and she went on in her unconscious egotism.
“I want them to marry. It’s the only life for a woman. And I have been so happy in my married life, always, from the first till now.”
A slight smile touched her lips as her eyes, softened with memories, looked back over a life that love had ennobled.
Suddenly she turned to him. For the first time in the conversation she seemed to transfer her interest from her own affairs to his.
“You never married?” she said. “That was a pity. Life’s only half lived without those ties.”
“Oh, Alice!” he answered with a groan, and rising he moved to the top of the steps.
“I was mean to you that time, long ago,” she said behind him. “But that was all in the past. That’s all forgotten now—forgotten and forgiven, isn’t it?”
For the moment he made no reply and she repeated in what seemed an absent tone,
“Forgotten and forgiven. It’s all so far away now; such years ago. So much has happened in between. It’s like another life, looking back on it.”