“Yes. I believe I met her somewhere once. Isn’t she married to an ambassador?”
“To our Ambassador at Constantinople.”
“I think I sang once at some house where she was, in the days when I used to sing.”
“She has heard you sing.”
“That was it then. But what can she want with me?”
“Your husband is in Constantinople. She knows him there.”
Rosamund flushed to the roots of her yellow hair. When he saw that painful wave of red go over her face Father Robertson looked away. All the delicacy in him felt the agony of her outraged reserve. Her body had stiffened.
“I must speak about this,” he said. “Forgive me if you can. But even if you cannot, I must speak.”
She looked down. Her face was still burning.
“You have let me know a great deal about yourself,” he went on. “That fact doesn’t give me any right to be curious. On the contrary! But I think, perhaps, your confidence has given me a right to try to help you spiritually even at the cost of giving you great mental pain. For a long time I have felt that perhaps in my relation to you I have been morally a coward.”