"Very well—admitted! But admit, too, that I have made amends as far as I could. It seems to me that a mountain has been made out of a molehill...."
Challis stopped suddenly, very ill at his ease. Judith, with a look half amused, half expectant, waited. She evidently was not going to help. Indeed, she would not have found it easy. Each knew that the conversation was being sustained artificially by attaching undue weight to the fact that Marianne's sole ground of complaint was this showing of her letter. Each knew how much more there was behind; how strong Marianne's indictment might have been with a full knowledge of the facts. After all, this blaming her for unjust action, on imperfect data, which would have been just had the whole come to light, was the merest quibble, and both knew it.
Judith broke the silence first, but only with what amounted to a declaration that she would not help. "There must be a beautiful sunset somewhere," was all it came to. And then matters were relieved by the silvery voice of Cintilla. Might she take away the tea-things? Yes—she might. While she did so, the talk turned on the legal question of Marianne's right to capture the children. Challis had, he said, consulted more than one legal friend on the subject, and they were all in a tale. The children were illegitimate, and therefore belonged to their mother. He got some satisfaction, evidently, from shredding a conspicuous absurdity of human law—why should children be claimable at all by a father who was a mere predecessor et præterea nihil—just a parent? He himself had made his title good to these two kids by his share in fostering them. Had his claim been a legal one only, he would have foregone it to make way for that of their natural owner. But he touched the matter very lightly. It did not outlast the removal of the tea-things.
Then Judith, going to the window, stood looking out, watching the light die from a cloud whose under side had broken into ridges of rosy flame. Its last ridge no longer saw the sun, when she turned slowly, coming back to a seat nearer Challis than the one she had occupied.
"This will be good-bye," she said. "I am going to Biarritz, and shall be away till January certainly. I did not want to go without seeing you again. So I was glad when the child came running up to say it was you, and shouldn't she catch you?" Her speech was redolent of self-command; no concessions to the pathos of parting.
"May I write to you?"
"I was going to ask you to do so. I shall hope to hear that your home is happy again, and that all goes well. This sort of thing has happened before—oh dear, how often!"
As Challis sat during the short silence that followed, not looking at all at his companion, one might almost have fancied that he shrank away from her, as one afraid. He found a voice to answer her, but not easily.
"I will write," he said. "And, believe me, Judith, in what I am going to say now I am speaking truth. I look with hope to the softening of my poor wife's heart, to the sound of her return to my empty home, and the voices of my babies...."
"Why should you suppose I doubt you? Of course you do!"