“You look awfully tired!” he remarked with concern. “And sad,” he added. “Is anything bothering you?”
She was silent for a moment, staring into the heart of the fire where the red and blue flames played flickeringly over the logs.
“I’ve been taking a look into the past,” she said, at last, “It’s—it’s rather a dreary occupation.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “I know.” Ignorant of that earlier past of hers, in which Eliot Coventry had played a part, he was thinking only of her unhappy married life, about which he had gathered a good deal from other people and a little—a very little—from Cara herself. But even that little had let in far more light than she had imagined. Robin’s insight was extraordinarily quick and keen, and a phrase dropped here or there, even her very silences at times, had enabled him to make a pretty good conjecture as to the kind of martyrdom she had suffered. It made his blood boil to think of the mental—and even physical—suffering she must have endured, tied to the brute and drunken bully which it was common knowledge Dene Hilyard had been.
“Don’t you think,” he went on gently, “that you could try to forget it, Cara? Don’t dwell on the past. Think of the future.”
“I’m afraid that’s rather dreary, too,” she answered, with a sad little smile. “It’s just... going on living... and remembering.”
He leaned over her and suddenly she felt the eager touch of his hand on hers.
“It needn’t be that, Cara,” he said swiftly. “It needn’t be that.” She looked up at him with startled eyes. Her thoughts had been so far away, bridging the gulf between to-day and long-dead yesterday, that she had almost to wrench them back to the present. And now here was Robin, with a new light in his eyes and a new, passionate note in his voice. “Cara—darling—”
With a sudden realisation of what was coming, she drew her hand quickly away from him.
“No—no, Robin—” she began.