John saw and understood that mental struggle almost with compassion, yet with an exultant sense of power over her. One conviction of the soul ever remains unshaken, that whom we understand is ours to have and to hold.
He deliberately released her hand. She did not make the slightest movement at regaining possession of it.
John wrestled with his voice, and forced it back, harsh and unfamiliar, to do his bidding.
"Di," he said, "I believe in truth even between men and women. I know what you are feeling about me at this moment. Well, that, even that, is better than a mistake; and you were making one. You had not the faintest suspicion of what has been the one object of my life since the day I first met you. The fault was mine, not yours. You could not see what was not on the surface to be seen. You would have gone on for the remainder of your natural life liking me in a way I—I cannot tolerate, if I had not—done as I did. I have not the power like some men of showing their feelings. I can't say the little things and do the little things that come to others by instinct. My instinct is to keep things to myself. I always have—till now."
Silence again; a silence which seemed to grow in a moment to such colossal dimensions that it was hardly credible a voice would have power to break it.
The twilight had advanced suddenly upon them. The young pheasants crept and called among the bracken. The night-birds passed swift and silent as sudden thoughts.
Di struggled with an unreasoning, furious anger, which, like a fiery horse, took her whole strength to control.
"I love you," said John, "and I shall go on loving you; and it is better you should know it."
And as he spoke she became aware that her anger was but a little thing beside his.
"What is the good of telling me," she said, "what I—what you know I—don't wish to hear?"