It was a sign of supreme embarrassment, the only one he gave. He did not mention Tanqueray, and for a moment she wondered if he had heard. Then she remembered. Of course, it was Nicky who had seen Tanqueray through.
Nicky was crowning his unlikelihood by refraining from the slightest allusion to the event. He was, she saw with dreadful lucidity, afraid of hurting her. And yet, he was (in his exquisite delicacy) behaving as if nothing had happened. They were going together to Miss Bickersteth's as if nothing had happened. His manner suggested that they were moving together in a world where nothing could happen; a world of delightful and amicable superficialities. She was not to be afraid of him; he was, as it were, looking another way; he wasn't even aware of any depths. The sheer beauty and gentleness of him showed her that he had seen and understood thoroughly what depths there were.
It was her certainty of Nicky's vision that drove her to the supreme act of courage.
"Why aren't we talking," she said, "about George Tanqueray?"
Nicky blushed in a violent distress. Even so, in the house of mourning, he would have blushed at some sudden, unsoftened reference to the deceased.
"I didn't know," he said, "whether he had told you."
"Why shouldn't he?"
Poor Nicky, she had made him blunder, so upset was he by the spectacle of her desperate pluck. He really was like a person calling after a bereavement. He had called on account of it, and yet it was the last thing he was going to talk about. He had come, not to condole, but to see if there was any way in which he could be of use.
"Well," said Nicky, "he seemed to have kept it so carefully from all his friends——"
"He told you——Why, you were there, weren't you?"