Agapit did not reply, and, as they were about to enter a thick wood, he passed the reins to Vesper and got out to light the lamps.
While he was fidgeting with them, Rose moved around so that she could look into the front seat.
"Your child is all right," said Vesper, gazing down at the head laid confidingly against his arm. "He is sound asleep,—not a bit alarmed by that fuss."
"It does not frighten him when human beings cry out. He only sorrows for things that have no voices, and he is always right when with you. It is not that; I wish to ask you—to ask you to forgive me."
"For what?"
"But you know—I told you what was not true."
"Do not speak of it. It was a mere bagatelle."
"It is not a bagatelle to make untruths," she said, wearily, "but I often do it,—most readily when I am frightened. But you did not frighten me."
Vesper did not reply except by a reassuring glance, which in her preoccupation she lost, and, catching her breath, she went on, "I think so often of a sentence from an Englishman that the sisters of a convent used to say to us,—it is about the little lies as well as the big ones that come from the pit."
"Do you mean Ruskin?" said Vesper, curiously, "when he speaks of 'one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended,—cast them all aside; they may be light and accidental, but they are ugly soot from the smoke of the pit for all that?'"