The Sailor shook his head.
"She can't judge anything until ... until I've told her ... about Cora."
"She has not been told?" Ambrose spoke casually, impassively. Somehow he had allowed himself to guess that the Sailor had told her, and that she had sent him away. Why he should have come to that rather fantastic conclusion he didn't know, except that she had not had a line from Henry Harper in eleven months. But he saw at once that he was wrong.
He felt that he must use great care. The ice was even thinner than he had suspected. Moreover an acute perception told him that nothing would be easier than for ill informed well-meaningness to commit a tragic blunder.
"You don't mean to say you thought I had?" The Sailor put his question oddly, disconnectedly.
"The fact is," said Edward Ambrose jesuitically, "I have never been impertinent enough to think the matter out. I know nothing beyond the fact that Mary Pridmore is very much your friend."
"There's no use in saying that when I can never be hers."
"Ah, there I don't agree," said Edward Ambrose calmly.
"Why not look the facts in the face?"
"Yes, why not?"