"Then why do you shun me?"
"Is there not a cause why I should?" she asked in a low tone, after a long pause.
"I think not. Will you tell me what the cause may be?"
She glanced up at him, she looked down, she smoothed unconsciously the silk apron on which her nervous hands rested, but she could not answer. Isaac saw it, and, bending nearer to her, he spoke in a whisper.
"Is it connected with that unhappy night--with what took place on the plateau?"
"I think you must have known all along that it is."
"And you consider it a sufficient reason for shunning me?"
"Yes, do not you?"
"Certainly not."
Great though her misery was, passionately though she loved him still, the cool assertion angered her. It gave her a courage to speak that nothing else could have given.