She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
While he searched his memory silence came again, and now it had the power to hurt them both. “Haven’t you always led me to believe,” he said in a voice of curious intensity, “that she was a nurse in a hospital?”
Harriet did not reply at once. But at last she said, “Yes, I have always wanted you to think so.”
He looked at her white face, and suddenly checked the words that rose to his tongue. Whatever those may have been, there was an immense solicitude in his manner when he spoke again. “It is not for me,” he said, “to question anything you may have said, or anything you may have done.”
“I did everything I could to carry out your wishes.” Her voice trembled painfully. “And I—I——”
“And you didn’t like to tell me,” he said gently.
“Yes. I couldn’t bear to tell you that she had insisted on choosing the life of all others you would have the least desired for her.”
“Don’t think that I complain,” he said. “I know you must have had a good reason. You have always been very considerate. But it looks as if the stars in their courses have managed to play a scurvy trick.”
“That they have!” Once more the swift color flowed over a fine face.
Suddenly she pressed her fingers to her eyelids to repress the quick tears.