"It's not his fault," she went on painfully, "that he has nothing in common with me and with my brother, different as we, too, are the one from the other. Gillie and I might have been born on different planets from Godfrey."
Laura had not meant to speak of Godfrey to Oliver. Indeed, she had formed the resolution never to do so again. But somehow, to-day, she felt as if she might break that salutary rule.
His next words seemed to prove to her that she could trust him to understand, for, "Yes," he said quietly, "you're right there, Laura. You and Godfrey have nothing in common between you, and that being so, I suppose there's nothing to be done?"
"No, there's nothing to be done," she repeated hopelessly. And then once more she broke her wise resolution: "If it hadn't been for Alice, I should, even now, be tempted to do what I so nearly did at the time that Godfrey and Gillie"—she hesitated—"had their first misunderstanding."
"What you nearly did then, Laura?" There came an eager, questioning thrill in her companion's strained voice.
"Yes—" Why shouldn't she unburden her heart for once? "Yes, at the time of that first quarrel between my brother and my husband, I nearly left Godfrey. But for your mother, I should have done so. Alice was a tiny baby then, and I didn't realise, as I realise now, what an awful responsibility a woman takes on herself in breaking up a child's happy home. Only your mother stopped my doing it, and the fact"—she looked at him with a soundless depth of sadness in her face—"the fact that Gillie didn't really want me to go and live with him. Of course it was long before the question of his going to Mexico was raised."
"And have you never regretted that you did not carry out that purpose?"
Oliver Tropenell was looking straight before him as he asked the dangerous question. They were walking, slowly, slowly, along the broad path which runs just within the railings along the park side of Piccadilly. Between twelve and one on an autumn Sunday morning this path is generally deserted.
She did not answer at once, and he said quickly, "Forgive me! I ought not to have asked you that."
"Yes," she said again, "you can ask me anything you like, Oliver. But it's very difficult to answer such a question truthfully."