There are moments when modesty is a false quantity, and when the big happinesses of life depend on a woman's capacity to realize this and her courage to act upon it. To Sara, it seemed that such a moment had come to her, and the absolute sincerity of her nature met it unafraid.
“No,” she said quietly. “You have only made clear to me—what you want, Garth. Need we—pretend to each other any longer?”
“I don't understand,” he muttered.
“Don't you?” She drew a littler nearer him, and the face she lifted to his was very white. But her eyes were shining. “That night—when I fell from the car—I—I wasn't unconscious.”
For an instant he stared at her, incredulous. Then he swung aside a little, his hand gripping the pillar against which he had been leaning till his knuckles showed white beneath the straining skin.
“You—weren't unconscious?” he repeated blankly.
“No—not all the time. I—heard—what you said.”
He seemed to pull himself together.
“Oh, Heaven only knows what I may have said at a moment like that,” he answered carelessly, but his voice was rough and hoarse. “A man talks wild when the woman he's with only misses death by a hair's breath.”
Sara's lips upturned at the corners in a slow smile—a smile that was neither mocking, nor tender, nor chiding, but an exquisite blending of all three. She caught her breath quickly—Trent could hear its soft sibilance. Then she spoke.