He shook his head, looking quickly away.
"But you've guessed?"
"Yes," he replied in a low voice.
Her hand fell lightly over his for a single instant. "Then be glad for me, Jack," she begged gently. "It's—it's compensation."
"I understand," he said, "and I'm truly very glad. It's kind of you to—to tell me, Venetia."
"It changes everything," she said pensively: "all my world is changed, and I am a new strange woman, seeing it with new eyes. I have learned so much—and in so short a time—I can hardly believe it. To think, it's not a year since that time at Tanglewood—!"
"Please!" he begged.
"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt you, Jack. But it's that I wanted to talk to you about. You won't mind, when you understand, as I have learned to understand.... I tell you, I'm altogether another woman. Marriage is like learning to live in a foreign land, but motherhood is another world. I find it difficult to realize Venetia of a year ago: she's like some strange creature I once knew but never quite understood. And yet, little as I understood her, I can make excuses for her: I know her impulses were not bad. I know, better than she knew ... she loved you, Jack."
"You must not say that, Venetia!"
"But it's true, my dear, most true," she insisted in her voice of gentle magic. "The rest ... was just madness, the sort of madness that some men have the power to—to kindle in women. It's a deadly power, very terrible, and they—who have it—use it as carelessly as children playing with matches and gunpowder—"