"Then why tell me?" Margaret said. "I don't want to hear it. All that is past. We are going to be married tomorrow—Michael is home from the Front. We are perfectly happy—don't recall it all."
A cry rang through the room. Its tone of envy and passion convinced
Margaret that even in the worst human beings there is the divine spark.
It actually hurt her that her own joy should mean this agony to another
woman.
"You are going to be married," Millicent said, "to the finest lover and the truest gentleman I have ever known, or ever shall know, the finest in the world, I think."
"Yes," Margaret said. "He is all that, and more—at least, to me."
"Much more," Millicent said, "much more. And will you tell him that I never reached the hills, that I am not guilty of that one meanness?"
"Then who did?" Margaret said quickly.
"Oh, then you thought I did? You thought I robbed him of his discovery? Does he think so, too?" Her voice shook. Her curious sense of honour scorned the idea.
"No, no," Margaret said. Her love of truth made her speak frankly. "He wouldn't believe it. He is still convinced that you never went to the hills, that you are innocent."
"But you believed it?"
"Yes," Margaret's voice was stern. "Yes, I believed it for a time."