She breathed hard as if in physical pain. "Don't, John; let us forget it—thrust it out of sight. Don't you see that it's wrong for me to listen? If you care so much I must mean something to you; have I deserved this at your hands?"
"Rachel!"
"You've forced me to say that; can't you see how it seems to me? I'm married to Belhaven and you think I ought to hear this. If I were married to you, John, would you want me to hear it from him?"
She had driven it home.
"Forgive me," he said hoarsely.
She saw the drawn look about his mouth and eyes and his pain deepened hers. "I don't want you to be less than yourself," she said gently.
"I'll try to get my lesson by rote," he said bitterly, "I shan't be a brute again."
She stooped down and, picking up a fallen acorn, turned it over in her hands as if she had discovered some new interest or virtue in it; she was trying to hide her face from him, for if he saw it he could surely read it. "I was going home by the woodpath," she said. "I've been to see Eva, but she's out somewhere, perhaps on her way to my house; I must go on."
"May I go with you? Or—"
"Of course you may come; we're going to be friends, aren't we?" Then, as they turned into the path: "I've heard all about your work in the Philippines; it was like you to say nothing of it. I was so glad of the promotion, too."