‘Yesterday?’
‘Oh, very well,’ he said fretfully, ‘you too! But if he did, if he did, come really back: “prey” and all?’
‘What is the riddle?’ she said, taking a deep breath and facing him brightly.
‘Would my “must” still be his?’ The face he raised to her, as he leaned forward under the direct light of the sun, was so colourless, cadaverous and haggard, the thought crossed her mind that it did indeed seem little more than a shadowy mask that but one hour of darkness might dispel.
‘You said, you know, we did win through. Why then should we be even thinking of defeat now?’
‘“We”!’
‘Oh no, you!’ she cried triumphantly.
‘You do not answer my question.’
‘Nor you mine! It was a glorious victory. Is there the ghost of a reason why you should cast your mind back? Is there, now?’
‘Only,’ said Lawford, looking patiently up into her face, ‘only because I love you’: and listened in the silence to the words as one may watch a bird that has escaped for ever and irrevocably out of its cage, steadily flying on and on till lost to sight.