"I'm not ungrateful——"
"There's nothing to be grateful for. I couldn't help it."
"I would have loved you more, Kathy, if it hadn't been for Audrey."
He spoke without emotion, in the tone of a man stating a simple matter of fact. Then he remarked in the same matter-of-fact voice that, as it happened, he was dying, so it made no difference. Perhaps he wanted her to know that a grave was ready for the secret she had just told him. There was no need to remind her of that,—she was sure of it before she spoke.
Her kneeling attitude, and hands outstretched on the counterpane, suggested an order of ideas that had never been very far from him during his illness. For Vincent had been wide awake and thinking difficult thoughts many a time when he lay with his eyes closed, and Katherine had thought he was asleep.
"I want you to read to me," he said at last.
"What would you like?"
"Well—the New Testament, I think, if it's all the same to you."
She rose from her knees and looked helplessly round the room. There was a Bible somewhere upstairs, but—
"You'll find one in the drawer there, where my handkerchiefs are."