"You see," he said to the Shadow, "I have forestalled you. I shall ask Margaret Craven this evening to marry me. You cannot prevent that . . . you cannot."
And a voice answered: "All things betray Thee Who betrayest Me."
"You have known us a very short time, Mr. Dune." Mrs. Craven's voice came to him from a great distance.
He felt as though he were speaking to two persons. "Time has nothing to do with falling in love, Mrs. Craven."
He saw to his intense amazement that she was greatly moved. She, who had always seemed to him a mask, now was suddenly revealed as suffering, tortured, intensely human. Her thin white hands were pressed together.
"I am a lonely, unhappy woman, Mr. Dune. Margaret is now all that is left to me. Everything has been taken from me. Rupert—" Her voice was lost; very slowly tears rolled down her cheeks. She began again desperately. "Margaret is all that I have got. If I were left alone it would be too much for me. I could not endure the silence."
It was the more moving in that it followed such stern reserve. His own isolation, the curious sense that he had that they were, both of them, needing protection against the same power (it seemed to him that if he raised his eyes he would see, on the opposite wall, the shadow of that third Presence); this filled him with the tenderest pity, so that suddenly he bent down and kissed her hand.
She caught his with a fierce convulsive movement, and so they sat in silence whilst he felt the pulse of her hand beat through his body, and once a tear rolled from her cheek on to his wrist.
"You understand . . ." she said at last. "You understand. I have always seen that you know. . ." Then she whispered, "How did you know?"
"Know?" He was bewildered, but before she could speak again the door opened and Margaret Craven came in.