The intoxication faded. The enterprise ahead gave to their joy a fugitive quality. Moreover, with her very surrender came to him a great misgiving.
"But you and Hartley? I've watched. It's been forced on me."
"Then you have misunderstood," she answered. "You put me too completely out of your life after our quarrel. That was about Hartley. You were too jealous, but it was my fault."
"Hartley," he asked, "spoke to you about that time?"
"Yes, and I told him he was a very dear friend, and he was kind enough to accept that and not to go away."
His measure of the widening of the rift between them made her more precious because of its affectionate human quality. She had been kinder to Graham, more mysterious about him, to draw Bobby back. Yet ever since his arrival at the Cedars, Graham had assumed toward Katherine an attitude scarcely to be limited by friendship. He had done what he had in Bobby's service clearly enough for her sake. For a long time past, indeed, in speaking of her Graham always seemed to discuss the woman he expected to marry.
"You are quite sure," he asked, puzzled, "that Hartley understood?"
"Why do you ask? He has shown how good a friend he is."
"He has always made me think," Bobby said, "that he had your love. You're sure he guessed that you cared for me?"
In that place, at that moment, there was a tragic colour to her coquetry.