'Yes...' she said, in little more than a whisper, after a pause, 'I think so too—more especially now ... that you suggest it. Your natural bias is, as a rule, in the direction of masterly inactivity.'
He smiled slowly.
'Perhaps ... so!'
'Therefore your conviction that action is necessary must be very strong before you would suggest it.'
'I feel,' he said, with some deliberation, 'that it will be better to keep them apart in the meantime.'
A strange, uneasy look passed across the girl's face. It happened that there was only one man on all the broad earth whom she trusted implicitly—the man at her side—and for a second that one unique faith wavered. With a sort of mental jerk—as of a person who makes a quick effort to recover a wavering balance—she restored her courageous trustfulness.
'Yes,' she murmured, 'I am sure of it.'
'And I suppose ... I suppose we must do it. You and I, Brenda?'
It was a wonderful thing how these two knew Alice Huston. Her faults were never mentioned between them. The infinite charity with which each looked upon these faults was a mutual possession, unhinted at, half concealed. Brenda knew quite well what was written between the lines of his outspoken supposition, and replied to his unasked question with simple diplomacy.
'Yes—we must do it.'