“We learn to be silent,” he answered her, “by reason of the rough realities of life. Am I the rude boy, Rosamunde, whom you pitied and helped of yore?”
She coloured, and her eyes grew deep with shadows. There was some bitterness in Tristan’s voice, even as though the memory of her own mere pity still weighed upon his soul. She grew meek before him with a simplicity that surprised even her own heart. In the old days her pride would have tinged her lips with scorn. Yet now that love had come and opened her whole heart, the petty prides of life had shrivelled and decayed.
“Tristan,” she said, “God knows, you are much changed to me. Sit here beside me. Must I then ask you twice?”
Tristan obeyed her in silence, resting one great arm on the carved back of the settle. The two were half turned towards each other, casting questioning glances into each other’s eyes; for as yet neither had fathomed the depths of the other’s heart.
It was Rosamunde who first set pride aside with much of the innocence of a little child.
“Tristan,” she said, with the look of one whose heart beat hurriedly, “am I to be forgiven?”
“Forgiven!” he echoed her.
“For the ingratitude I gave to you of old. I was a proud fool in those dead days. Tristan, I am wiser now.”
He caught a deep breath, bent slightly towards her, gazing in her face.
“I remember no ingratitude,” he said.