"It wasn't an accident, and there isn't anything I don't know."
"You——?"
The slow sideways shake changed to one single nod. The next moment his arms were about her and he was leading her to the sofa again. He sighed. There was no help for it now. If she would have it she must have it all.
"It's the only thing I haven't told you. We may as well get it over," he said.
Nor did he whisper this time. He spoke in his usual voice, using the plainest English he could.
But what it was that Philip Esdaile told his wife you must guess for a little while longer. She was the first living soul to know. And it was a very different thing from that which she had left Santon to hear.
For it was this overwhelmingly extraordinary yet stupendously ordinary thing that sent her round to Audrey Cunningham the next morning, but without comfort for her, with no plans for settling the wedding out of hand.
It was this same thing that took her back to Santon on the Wednesday, without Chummy, without help for Joan.
It was this same thing that puzzled Monty Rooke's brain as he took his midnight walk that night down Roehampton Lane, driven from Audrey Cunningham's company and sick of the sight of Philip and all his works.
And it was this and nothing else that Cecil Hubbard so much wanted to know when he knitted his honest brows over hydrophones, sound-ranging, or whatever other mysterious apparatus it was that Philip Esdaile might have hidden away in his cellar.