He checked himself, put down his bag—he had just come in—and closed the door into the hall. Then he stood at a safe distance from her, and folded his arms in order to be able to keep his head—which shows how strange the English language is.
“Elizabeth,” he said gravely. “I've been a self-centered fool. I stayed away because I've been in trouble. I'm still in trouble, for that matter. But it hasn't anything to do with you. Not directly, anyhow.”
“Don't you think it's possible that I know what it is?”
“You do know.”
He was too absorbed to notice the new maturity in her face, the brooding maternity born of a profound passion. To Elizabeth just then he was not a man, her man, daily deciding matters of life and death, but a worried boy, magnifying a trifle into importance.
“There is always gossip,” she said, “and the only thing one can do is to forget it at once. You ought to be too big for that sort of thing.”
“But—suppose it is true?”
“What difference would it make?”
He made a quick movement toward her.
“There may be more than that. I don't know, Elizabeth,” he said, his eyes on hers. “I have always thought—I can't go to David now.”