She recovered first. "After all," she said, "why shouldn't they?"
"Well—I thought you weren't going to tell people."
Her face mounted a sudden flame, a signal of resentment. She had always resented the imputation of secrecy in their relations. And now it was as if he were dragging forward the thought that she perpetually put away from her.
"Tell about what?" she asked, coldly.
"About Sarratt End. I thought we'd agreed to keep it for ourselves."
"I haven't told everybody. But I did tell Milly Powell."
"My dear girl, that wasn't very clever of you."
"I told her not to tell. She knows what I want to be alone for."
"Good God!" As he stared in dismay at what he judged to be her unspeakable indiscretion, the thought rushed in on her straight from him, the naked, terrible thought, that there should be anything they had to hide, they had to be alone for. She saw at the same time how defenceless he was before it; he couldn't keep it back; he couldn't put it away from him. It was always with him, a danger watching on his threshold.
"Then" (he made her face it with him), "we're done for."