“Men have been cruel to you. That is why you ask.”
“Ah no!” she said, turning away her head quickly. “I will never call men cruel. I have suffered. Who has not? The greatest suffering—it is the greatest suffering in life—that which comes between man and woman.”
“It is true,” replied Raine musingly. “As it can be the greatest joy. Once I could not bear to think of it, for the pain. It is strange—”
“What is strange?” asked Katherine in a low voice.
He was scarcely conscious how he had come to strike the chord of his own life. It seemed natural at the moment.
“It is strange how like a dream it all appears now; as if another than I—a bosom friend, whose secrets I shared—had gone through it.”
She put her hand lightly on his arm, and he felt the touch to his heart.
“Would you care for me to tell you? I should like to. It would seem a way of laying a ghost peacefully and reverently. It has never passed out of me yet—not even to my father.”
“Tell me,” murmured Katherine.
“Both are dead—twelve years ago.”