The young man moved too. He turned away, and a poignant sensation tore and hacked at him, so to speak. It hurt him physically. He gazed out over the dazzling whiteness of the smooth river seeing nothing, his whole being tense with the effort to resist the showing of that pain.
"Yes, yes, I have heard of her death, but I refused to believe it," he answered.
There was a moment of ominous silence, save for the shrilling of the insects, and lapping of the stream.
"Oh, a woman!" she said, with an almost alarming calm. "Have I ever heard of her?"
"I think not," Laurence answered.
"Then Louise had grounds for her assertions," she said, still with that deadly calm. "I thought it unworthy to listen. I forbade her to write or speak to me upon the subject. I—"
Laurence wheeled round. His eyes were dangerous. All the fanaticism of his race, and something finer than that, looked out of them.
"Think what you please of me," he cried; "but of her, think no evil. Never dare to think any evil. She was one of the saints of God; and you, of all women, have no cause to misjudge her. She saved me from committing a great sin."
A singular expression crossed the young lady's face, an imperious desire to ask, to search out the ultimate of the matter. But it was momentary. Spoilt child of fortune, she was too unaccustomed to vital drama to know how to deal with it. It staggered, it also slightly disgusted her. She could not rise to it. So conventionality proved stronger than even this very legitimate curiosity. Virginia remained true to her somewhat artificial traditions, to her own canons of good taste and self-respect, to that singular clause of the social creed which declares the thing unsaid also non-existent. Virginia appeared, in a way, admirable just then, yet she gave the measure of her nature. It was not great. She turned aside, with a movement of well-defined and lofty superiority.
"Are you aware that you become very indelicate?" she asked.