She searched his face with the skepticism which the world had taught, then, with a swift intake of breath, looked believing away.
"We must begin at the beginning," she said.
She told him her story as she had told it to the dentist that hideous night of explanations at the Lorna Doone, but where Paul's black silence had stifled her, lamed her speech, made her almost doubt herself, this listener's faith leaped before her words, bridged the difficult places where she faltered, spread the cloak of chivalry in the miry way. Yet, with all his sympathy, it hurt her, so senseless always seemed the reckoning for her follies, so poignant were her regrets, and once, when she began to speak of Stella and the riot, he stopped her.
"Don't go on," he begged. "I see what it costs you."
"I'd rather you heard it all," she replied. "It's your due."
Nevertheless, she did not tell him all. She could speak of Stella, of Amy, of young Meyer, of the floor-walker, but no word of Paul passed her lips. She let Atwood infer that the stigma of the refuge had driven her from Grimes's employ, as it had thrust her from the department store. The whole chain of circumstances which the dentist's name connoted had become suddenly as inexplicable to herself as to this transcendent hero of a perfect day.
The sun was low when she made an end, and the long-drawn shadows of the birches in the lake turned their thoughts again to that other sundown.
"You were a lonely little figure as I looked back," he said. "I took that picture with me through the hills, and it remained my sharpest memory. It was a sad memory, a mute reproach, like the poor things I bought for you to wear."
"Then you did get them!" she cried, her dress instinct astir. "What were they like?"
"I will show them to you some day."