Martin said nothing for quite a long time, and when he did speak it was very gravely: ‘Mary—how much does she know of all this?’
‘As little as I could possibly tell her. She knows that I can’t get on with my mother, and that my mother won’t ask her to Morton; but she doesn’t know that I had to leave home because of a woman, that I was turned out—I’ve wanted to spare her all I could.’
‘Do you think you were right?’
‘Yes, a thousand times.’
‘Well, only you can judge of that, Stephen.’ He looked down at the carpet, then he asked abruptly: ‘Does she know about you and me, about . . .’
Stephen shook her head: ‘No, she’s no idea. She thinks you were just my very good friend as you are to-day. I don’t want her to know.’
‘For my sake?’ he demanded.
And she answered slowly: ‘Well, yes, I suppose so . . . for your sake, Martin.’
Then an unexpected, and to her very moving thing happened; his eyes filled with pitiful tears: ‘Lord,’ he muttered, ‘why need this have come upon you—this incomprehensible dispensation? It’s enough to make one deny God’s existence!’
She felt a great need to reassure him. At that moment he seemed so much younger than she was as he stood there with his eyes full of pitiful tears, doubting God, because of his human compassion: ‘There are still the trees. Don’t forget the trees, Martin—because of them you used to believe.’