“Yes, may God confound them! Come close to the window, dear; you can trust me to the death.”
He heard her catch a short, sharp breath as though some one had dashed icy water upon her bosom.
“John, I can’t tell you—I can’t!”
“Why, child?—come?”
“Don’t ask me—don’t ask me anything to-night. I cannot bear it, when you have risked so much.”
He could not see her, not even her hands, but he felt that she was very close to him. Assuredly this was not the Barbara of the old sullen days? Her infinite dumb distress went to his heart like wine.
“Barbe!”
She could not answer him for the moment, her thoughts in a tumult with the miserable secrets of the past.
“I cannot—I cannot!”
“Tell me, dear; you can trust me.”