“She loved you?”
“With the blameless passion that we both at first thought was the most perfect friendship.”
“Wouldn't you marry her now if she were free?”
“No. It is ended. We have grown apart in renunciation for twenty years. I am not one that changes easily, you see. You have taken what I could not withhold from you, and it is yours. I am in your power.”
They heard a great steamer blowing upon the strait. Its voice reverberated through the woods. The girl's beautiful face was full of a tender wistfulness, half maternal. Neither jealousy nor pique marred its exquisite sympathy. It was such an expression as an untamed wood-nymph might have worn, contemplating the life of man.
“Don't be sad,” she breathed.
Vague terror shot through Maurice's gaze.
“That is a strange thing for you to say to me, Lily. Is it all you can say—when I love you so?”
“I was thinking of the other woman. Did she suffer?”