“I am glad Pete is living,” she said quietly.
He was aghast at her calmness. The irregular lines in his face showed the disordered state of his soul, but she walked by his side without the quiver of an eyelid, or a tinge of colour more than usual. Had she understood?
“Look!” he said, and he drew Pete's telegram from his pocket and gave it to her.
She opened it easily, and he watched her while she read it, prepared for a cry, and ready to put his arms about her if she fell. But there was not a movement save the motion of her fingers, not a sound except the crinking of the thin paper. He turned his head away. The sun was shining; there was a steely light on the firs, and here and there a white breaker was rising like a sea-bird out of the blue surface of the sea.
“Well?” she said.
“Kate, you astonish me,” said Philip. “This comes on us like a thundercloud, and you seem not to realise it.”
She put her arms about his neck, and the paper rustled on his shoulder. “My darling,” she said, “do you love me still?”
“You know I love you, but——”
“Then there is no thundercloud in heaven for me now,” she said.
The simple grandeur of the girl's love shamed him. Its trust, its confidence, its indifference to all the evil chance of life if only he loved her still, this had been beyond him. But he disengaged her arms and said, “We must not live in a fool's paradise, Kate. You promised yourself to Pete——”