“Just outside my gate he was knocked down by a car and very badly injured; it is hardly probable that he will live. The people who knocked him down came hammering on my door. We got him to the Cottage Hospital. In spite of everything I felt sorry for the poor wretch—but that has nothing to do with it now. I came to tell you what happened.”
“And yet do not ask me to explain?”
“Of course not!” He swung round and faced her for a moment. “Do you think I would put that indignity on you, Joan?”
“You are very generous, Johnny—why?”
She waited, listening expectantly for his answer. It was some time in coming.
“I am not generous. I simply know that for you to be other than honourable and innocent, pure and good, would be an impossibility.”
“Why do you know that?”
“Because I know you.”
She smiled. The answer she had almost dreaded to hear had not come. Yet it should have been so simple, so ample an answer to her question. Had he said, “Because I love you,” it would have been enough; but he had said, “Because I know you”; and so she smiled.
“Johnny, I have something to say to you. Do you remember the day when you asked me to be your wife? I was frank and open to you then, was I not?”