She held herself in. A terrible impulse was upon her to tell him straight out that she did not see it; that it was too bad; that there was no reason why she should be called upon to give everything up.
"So, if we don't come," he said, "you'll understand? It's better—it really is better not."
His voice moved her, and her heart cried to him, "Poor Peter!"
"Yes," she said; "I understand."
Of course she understood. Poor Peter! so it had come to that?
"Can't you stay for tea?" she said.
"No; I must be going back to her."
He rose. His hand found hers. Its slight pressure told her that he gave and took the sadness of renunciation.
That winter Mrs. Wilkinson fell ill in good earnest, and Wilkinson became the prey of a pitiful remorse that kept him a prisoner by his wife's bedside.
He had always been a good man; it was now understood that he avoided Mrs. Norman because he desired to remain what he had always been.