"I don't think I should ever be angry with you," he said gently. "Anger seems to belong to lesser things than—love. I should either believe in you or disbelieve in you."
He said the somewhat curious words gravely.
Clodagh turned to him swiftly.
"Walter, there was no doubt of me in your mind then?"
He met her searching eyes quietly.
"Not one doubt. Do you think I have forgotten that night at Tuffnell?"
He spoke almost gently; but at his words, the remembrance of the night at Tuffnell rushed back upon Clodagh with an almost exaggerated vividness. On that night love had shone upon her—love, with its coveted accompaniments of trust and protection. She remembered the dimly-lit music-room, the dark garden with its old-fashioned scents; she remembered Gore's quiet, distinct question. "Not one of these people is anything to you—in any way?"
She remembered this; and she remembered also the infinitesimal pause that had divided his question from her answer, when the images of Lady Frances Hope, of Serracauld, of Deerehurst, had flitted across her imagination. Then, last of all, she recalled her own answer—
"Not one of them is anything to me—in any way."
The moment that had brought forth that answer had been crucial—had been, psychologically, intensely interesting. It had been the triumph of love—the triumph of the egotism that is, and ever must be, a component part of love.