The tears spring to her eyes. The old remembered music of his voice seems to thrill her with joy and pain.
"Do you think me so hard, so cold?" she falters. "Long, long ago, I have forgiven!"
"And you knew I was—free?"
The warm colour sweeps over her face. Her eyes are hidden from his eager gaze.
"Yes," she says softly.
"And the past, is it all over?" he says, very low, as he leaves his chair and bends towards her. "Do you still think I willingly deceived you?"
"It would have been kinder, wiser, had you told me the truth at first," she says somewhat faintly.
In the darkness of that shadowy room, with the sense of his presence, with the rich music of his voice thrilling her heart with the long-vanished gladness of other days, she feels strangely, unutterably happy. It makes her almost afraid.
"One thing more," he says, and he kneels at her feet and draws her hands within his own. "Have art and the world and the silence of long years driven me out of your heart, for neither danger nor absence have driven you out of mine?"
"I told you I had not forgotten," she says, trembling greatly and growing very pale beneath this strange tumult of feeling that is so full of gladness and yet of fear.