A white moth of the night wandered into Rowan's face searching its features; then it flitted over to her and searched hers, its wings fanning and clinging to her lips; and then it passed on, pursuing amid mistakes and inconstancies its life-quest lasting through a few darknesses.
Fear suddenly reached down into her heart and drew up one question; and she asked that question in a voice low and cold and guarded:
"Sometime, when you ask another woman to marry you, will you think it your duty to tell her?"
"I will never ask any other woman."
"I did not inquire for your intention; I asked what you would believe to be your duty."
"It will never become my duty. But if it should, I would never marry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tell the truth."
"You mean that you would tell her?"
"I mean that I would tell her."
After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all her anger gone:
"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you have told me—after it is too late. If you cannot find some way of letting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tell her afterward, when you have won her life away from her. If there is deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving her than it was to begin to deceive her. Tell her, if you must, while she is indifferent and will not care, not after she has given herself to you and will then have to give you up. But what can you, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this! How can you know, how can you ever, ever know!"