What had provoked his avowal had been the most innocent, in a sense the most beautiful, feeling of which a woman is capable—love for her child.
"The doctor says Alice ought to have a change, that she ought to go to the sea, for a little while. I asked Godfrey if I might take her, but he said he didn't think it necessary." She had added musingly, "It's odd, for he really is devoted to the child."
They had been walking slowly, sauntering side by side, very close to one another, for the path was only a narrow track among the trees, towards the summerhouse where they were now—she sitting and he standing.
He had answered in what, if she had been less absorbed in herself and her own concerns, she might have realised was a dangerously still voice: "I think I can persuade Godfrey to let her go. Apart from the child altogether, you ought to have a change." And then—then she had said, rather listlessly, not at all bitterly, "Oh, it doesn't matter about me!"
Such a simple phrase, embodying an obvious truth, yet they had forced from him the words: "I think it does matter about you, Laura. At least I know it matters a good deal to me, for, as of course you know by now, I love you."
And if his voice had remained quite low and steady, she had seen the blazing, supplicating eyes....
But he had looked away, at once, when he had uttered those irrevocable words; and after a few moments, which had seemed to him an eternity, had come that low, heart-felt cry, "Oh, but this is terrible——"
"Terrible? Why, Laura?" He crossed his arms, and turning, gazed straight down at her bowed figure.
Again there came a long, unnatural pause.