"I thought so in London, I think so here, I have always thought so—always. If others have—have disbelieved in you ever, I haven't been like them. You doubt it?"
He moved a step forward, and stood looking down on her.
"But I could prove it."
"Oh—how?"
"Meyer Isaacson knows it."
He did not refer to his marrying her as a proof already given, for that might have meant something else than belief in the hidden unworldliness of her, and in her hidden desire for that which was good and beautiful.
"And don't you—don't you know it, even after this morning?"
"After this morning—I don't want to hurt you—but after this morning you will have to prove it to me, thoroughly prove it, or else I shall not believe it."
The solo voice of the Nubian sailor was lost in the chorus of voices which came floating over the Nile.
"I don't want to be cold," she continued, "and I don't want to be unkind, but one can't help certain things. I have been driven, forced, into scepticism about men. I don't want to go back into my life, I don't want to trot out the old 'more sinned against than sinning' cliché. I don't mean to play the winey-piney woman. I never have done that, and I believe I've got a little grit in me to prevent me ever doing it. But such a thing as happened this morning must breed doubts and suspicions in a woman who has had the experience I have had. I might very easily tell you a lie, Nigel. I might very easily fall into your arms and say I've forgotten all about it, and I'll never think of it again, and all that sort of thing. It would be the simplest thing in the world for me to act a part to you. But you've been good to me when I was lonely, and you've cared for me enough to marry me, and—well, I won't. I'll tell you the truth. It's this: I can't help knowing you did doubt me, and I'm not really a bit surprised, and I don't know that I'd any right to be hurt; but whether I had any right or not, I was hurt, and it will take a little time to make me feel quite safe with you—quite safe—as one can only feel when the little bit of sincerity in one is believed in and trusted."