Carrie understood that this was probably as far as he considered it advisable to venture, since she knew that he considered her husband a stock-rider too. Although she was not exactly pleased, it did not seem worth while to show her displeasure.
"One must talk of something," she said.
Urmston appeared to glance at her reproachfully. "There was a time when you and I could be content without a word. Silence is now and then wonderfully expressive. Thoughts are often spoiled by being forced into clumsy speech."
"That time has gone by some little while ago," she said; and there was a quiet decisiveness in the girl's tone that the man did not seem to notice. "Perhaps it was our own fault, though I do not know. Circumstances were against us, but it might have been different, had we had the courage to take our destiny in our hands. Still, I am not admitting that I am sorry we did not do so."
Urmston was sensible of a slightly uncomfortable feeling. It had been borne in upon him that, had he shown himself bolder and more persistent, Carrie might, after all, never have married Leland. Still, he did not think it kind that she should remind him of it, if that, indeed, was what she had meant to do.
"Those days," he said gently, "will always live with me. I have only the memory of them to cheer me, and I cherish it as my dearest possession."
The girl did not know whether she was touched or not. She was naturally, at least, a little sorry for him, but his self-compassionate sentimentality was apt to become tiresome at times.
"Wouldn't it be wiser if you made an effort to keep it a little further in the background?" she said. "It would, in the circumstances, at least, be more appropriate."
The man dropped his voice. "Carrie," he said, "I couldn't if I wished to. Love of one kind is indestructible. Even the fact that you were forced into marrying another man cannot destroy it. He is, after all, an accident."
Carrie's face had flushed, but she laughed outright Urmston's love, indestructible as he said it was, had, as she realised now, prompted him to do very little, while there was something singularly inapposite in his terming her strenuous, forceful husband an accident. She felt that, had he been in her disconsolate lover's place, he would at any cost have broken through the encompassing difficulties.