The air came in refreshingly through the opened windows. Elenore was standing, one arm on the back of a chair. She smiled slightly as Hastings came toward her impetuously.
“It was quite a composite speech, wasn’t it?” she said.
He covered the hand on the back of the chair with his own.
“I can’t realize it,” he said. “You—all that time.”
“It seemed quite a long time, too,” she confessed.
“You underground!” he went on. “I should have died of anxiety if I had suspected it.”
“I wanted to tell you dreadfully,” she murmured. “There’s no harm in owning now that I was afraid.”
The hand that held hers closed over it more tightly.
“There’s no harm now,” he said, tensely, “in telling me if you meant what you said: that you thought Elenore cared for me.”
“There’s no particular harm now,” she parodied, daringly, with downcast eyes, “in your telling Elenore now what you told her then.”