"I'd rather not discuss it."
"Very well, don't you say anything, but will you listen?" Denis moved restlessly in his chair. "You're too hard on her," said Lettice, hitting straight and hard. "You will treat her as a woman, when she's only a child. And you don't realize what marrying a—a beast like that does to a girl. It bruises her innocence. It's like tearing open the eyes of a blind kitten. You can't expect her to see right and wrong like other people." So far beyond herself had Lettice been carried by that potent loosener of tongues, a sense of injustice! She went on with the same resolute candor: "Besides, there's another thing. She loves you. And she can love; you won't meet what she has to give twice in a lifetime. I know"—Lettice spoke with an effort; it was as near to an avowal as she could go, and the fact that she thought her cause worth such a sacrifice added tenfold to the weight of her words—"I know she's often made me ashamed of my stockishness. Are you prepared to throw all that away?"
She had finished, and she stopped. Denis sat silent, staring into the fire and pulling absently at his forelock, a trick he had when deep in thought. The soft sounds of Lettice's business did not break the stillness of the room. The alarm clock which Denis had given her to get up by in the morning (Lettice had long been mortally afraid of the alarm, and she still handled it as gingerly as if she expected it to explode) ticked on through the stillness. It struck seven; Denis glanced at his watch, and got up.
"I must go," he said confusedly. "I—I'd no idea it was so late."
He took his hat and stick, and Lettice thought he was really going then and there, without another word; but he thought better of it, and from the landing came back and stood in the doorway, visibly struggling with himself. "You—you mustn't think I mind what you said, Lettice," he got out. "I'd always listen to you. But I can't do this—I can't—"
Lettice looked him in the face. "She would have something to forgive you now," she said deliberately.
"No, she would not," said Denis with equal deliberation; and he met her eyes, fair and square. "But that's not anything to do with it. It's not a question of forgiveness. It's—I—oh, I can't do it, Lettice—I can't explain—"
"Well—" said Lettice, summing up with that sad, vague word which looks back, unsatisfied, over the past, and forward, unhopeful, towards the future. And that was all she learned, then or for many months to come, of Denis's feelings for Dorothea, of his wanderings in the wilderness, of the manner of his deliverance. Not till many months later, in alien scenes, in unimaginable circumstances, in a different world, did he reopen that subject.
He straightened himself, glancing again at his watch. "I really must go. I'm dinin' with the Wandesfordes, to celebrate, and I'll never hear the last of it if I'm late. Wandesforde always thinks he can do the funny dog about Irish people—silly ass. Wish you were coming too."