'Bridget,' he said impetuously, 'we're going to be husband and wife to-morrow. It makes me tremble, darling—with happiness and hope, and with fear, too. What have I done, a rough Bushy like me—to win a woman like you? Well you know how I think about that. And I don't believe in a man belittling himself to the woman he loves, though it's just because he loves her so that he feels unworthy of her. And then it comes over me again—badly sometimes—how little I really know of you, and of your life, and of your feelings towards the other men you must have had to do with—one other man in especial, may be, that you've loved, or may have thought you loved. That's what I want to know about, my dear.'
Her face was turned from his as she answered:
'What's the good of your knowing, Colin? Whatever there was is past.'
'But IS it past. Over and over again, I've started to ask you and have pulled back. Now it's got like a festering sore in my heart, and I'm afraid it will go on festering unless I'm satisfied. There WAS somebody in especial—a man you cared for and might have married if he had been a finer sort of chap than he turned out to be?'
She looked at him sharply.
'How do you know? Has Rosamond Tallant been telling you?'
'No,' he said, with complete candour. 'There wasn't a word of that sort passed between us—and I wouldn't have heeded it if there had.'
'Joan, then? No, I'm sure Joan Gildea wouldn't have talked behind my back.'
'You may bet your life on that. Joan hasn't said anything about whatever love-affairs you may have had.'
'Every girl has had love-affairs. I'm no exception to the rule. There's been no real harm in them. Let them lie—buried in oblivion. They're not worth resurrecting.'