"Even that."
They both laugh; but in Esther's laugh there is a ring of bitterness, which she herself hears, and wonders that he does not.
As they near the house, they see thin slits of crimson light through the dining-room shutters. Esther involuntarily quickens her pace.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" he asks, his eyes shining eager with reproachful passion in the passionless white starlight. "Who knows? to-morrow we may be dead; to-day we are as gods, knowing good and evil. This walk has not been to you what it has to me, or you would be in no haste to end it."
"I don't suppose it has," she answers, half-absently, with a sigh.
He had expected an eager disclaimer, and is disappointed.
"There can be but one explanation of that," he says, angrily.
"If you only knew——," begins Esther, with an uncertain half-inclination to confess, though late.
"If you are going to tell me anything disagreeable," he says, quickly putting his hand before her mouth, "stop! Tell me to-morrow, or the day after, but not now—not now! Let there be one day of my life on which I may look back and say, as God said when he looked back upon His new world, 'Behold, it is very good!'"
She is silent.