"What promise?"
"If I tell you all I think in my heart, you will not allow it to come between me and you, to undermine the only strong friendship I have in the world, the only one I know of."
"It shall make no difference between us. You may trust me."
They turned and walked again slowly, once up and down. Then Fenwick's voice, when he next spoke, had an added earnestness, a growing tension, with an echo in it, for her, of the years gone by—a ring of his young enthusiasm, of his passionate outburst in the lawn-tennis garden twenty years ago. He made no more ado of what he had to say.
"I can form no image in my mind, try how I may, of any woman for whose sake I would give up one hour of the precious privilege I now enjoy. I have no right to—to assess it, to make a definition of it. But I have it now. I could not resume my place as the husband of a now unknown wife—you know what I mean—and not lose the privilege of being near you. It may be—it is conceivable, I mean; no more—that a revelation to me of myself, a light thrown on what I am, would bring me what would palliate the wrench of losing what I have of you. It may be so—it may be! All I know is—all I can say is—that I can now imagine nothing, no treasure of love of wife or daughter, that would be a make-weight for what I should lose if I had to part from you." He paused a moment, as though he thought he was going beyond his rights of speech, then added more quietly: "No; I can imagine no hypothetical wife. And as for my hypothetical daughter, I find I am always utilising Sally for her."
Mrs. Nightingale murmured in an undertone the word "Sallykin," as she so often did when her daughter was mentioned, with that sort of caress in her voice. This time it was caught by a sort of gasp, and she remained silent. What Sally was had crossed her mind—the strange relation in which she stood to Fenwick, born in his wedlock, but no daughter of his. And there he was, as fond of the child as he could be.
Fenwick may have half misunderstood something in her manner, for when he spoke again his words had a certain aspect of recoil from what he had said, at least of consideration of it in some new light.
"When I speak to you as freely as this, remember the nature of the claim I have to do so—the only apology I can make for taking an exceptional licence."
"How do you mean?"