They were alone, looking at each other with anxious eyes, but neither spoke. Frank began hurriedly, stumbling over his words as if he were eager to forestall any evil suspicion she might entertain.
"Eva, believe me, Eva; you must believe me; it was nothing. You must not think anything of—of what happened just now."
In a few brief words he told of a former acquaintance—a young man's acquaintance—of the skating rink. This was all at an end, it was a thing of the past; she must know that every man had a past. She knew that—surely?
"A past," she echoed coldly. "Oh! every man has a past? But we—we have no past."
"Eva, Eva!" he cried, for through the irony of her tone there pierced such acute pain that he stood dismayed and helpless, not knowing how to comfort her.
"Tell me only this much," she went on, going close up to him and looking into his face with that strange stare. She laid her hands on his shoulders and tried to read his inmost soul through his eyes. And she slowly said, expecting to hear her own doom in the first word he should utter:
"It is at an end?"
He fell on his knees before her where she had dropped on a chair, rigidly upright, as if she were frozen; he warmed her resisting hands in his grasp—and he swore that it was. His oath rang true; truth was stamped on his face; and she believed him.... He besought forgiveness, told her that she must never think of it again, that all men—
"Oh yes," she nodded her comprehension. "I know, I understand. Papa has brought me up on rather liberal lines."
He recollected that phrase; she had used it once before. And they both at once remembered Moldehoï and the black clouds. Eva shuddered.