"Hugh!" she cried, looking up to search his face narrowly—"Hugh, you've not been pretending—?"
"Pretending?" he repeated, thick-witted.
"Hugh, I could never forgive you if you'd been pretending. It would be too cruel.... Ah, but you haven't been! Tell me you haven't!"
"I don't understand.... Pretending what?"
"Pretending you didn't know who I was—pretending to fall in love with me just because you were sorry for me, to make me think it was me you loved and not the woman you felt bound to take care of, because you'd—you had—"
"Mary, listen to me," he interrupted. "I swear I didn't know you. Perhaps you don't understand how wonderfully you've changed. It's hard for me to believe you can be one with the timid and distracted little girl I married that rainy night. You're nothing like.... Only, that night on the stage, as Joan Thursday, you were that girl again. Max told me it was make-up; I wouldn't believe him; to me you hadn't changed at all; you hadn't aged a day.... But that morning when I saw you first on the Great South Beach—I never dreamed of associating you with my wife. Do you realize I had never seen you in full light—never knew the colour of your hair?... Dear, I didn't know, believe me. It was you who bewitched me—not the wife for whose sake I fought against what I thought infatuation for you. I loved—I love you only, you as you are—not the poor little girl of the Commercial House."
"Is it true?" she questioned sadly, incredulous.
"It is true, Mary. I love you."
"I have loved you always," she said softly between barely parted lips—"always, Hugh. Even when I thought you dead.... I did believe that you were drowned out there, Hugh! You know that, don't you?"
"I have never for an instant questioned it."