Cyprian saw the thing through, his brain working busily. He had been a fool not to gauge the possibility of Hla Byu's reappearance, considering the terms on which they had parted. And he could not excuse himself for having omitted to tell Ferlie. He supposed that his reluctance to do so sprang from the fact that, since their long acquaintance dated from her childhood, it was difficult for him to accept her even now as altogether a woman and, moreover, a woman who had touched pitch without being defiled.
He climbed the hill in the dusk, his face troubled, trying to decide how far Hla Byu would have succeeded in making herself understood. Unfortunately, his own memory convinced him that little Thu Daw's eyes would not take very much understanding of either Ferlie's instinct or her intelligence.
He had not the remotest idea what he was going to say to satisfy her of the strange truth that his very heart-hunger for her was responsible for Thu Daw.
Once more the word leapt out as if written in letters of flame across the blackening hill-side. No explanation could make him anything but "responsible" for his son, as surely as Ferlie was for hers.
He swung back the garden-gate and clashed it behind him, thereupon hastening his footsteps, urged by a nauseating desire to get this scene with Ferlie over.
And saw her in the grey gloom, coming to meet him between the two long borders of flaming lilies with his child in her arms.
When she reached him it was to lift a face glorified with the forgiveness he had not asked.
"My very dear," she said, "Why did you not tell me?"
Even thus far could Ferlie trust her earthly god.