"If—if you have, and if you are, all that you say, why do you question me so?" Drew asked. He was feeling his way blindly through this new moral, or unmoral, thicket.
"Because sometimes a queer thought comes to me. I know it is because these people can not understand; but you can, and when you have told me it is all right—I shall never have the thought again."
"What is the thought, Joyce?"
"You see," she almost touched him now in her intensity, "I do not know anything about Mr. Gaston—really. About what he was, what his life was before he came here. I would not hurt him for anything God could give to me—and sometimes I have wondered if—if in that life that was; the life that might come again to him, you know,—for for he is so different from any one here—I wonder if what he has done for me, could hurt him? Could anything that is so heavenly good for me—hurt him?—tell me, tell me!"
And now Drew dropped his eyes and sent a swift prayer to God for forgiveness.
He had thought her without conscience, without soul. He felt himself in a dim valley, and he hardly dared to raise his eyes to her.
"I am perfectly happy." The words quivered to him, and belied themselves. "And he says he—is—but would he be if he were back there—where he came from? In my getting of my life, am I taking from his?"
"Good God!"
"You—you do not understand, either?"
"Yes; I do, Joyce—I understand. I understand."