“We both lied for your sake,” he said; which might have been an apology or a tribute. Norma gave no sign that she had heard him.
Jimmie followed them upstairs and opened the front door. He put out his hand to Morland, who took it and said “Good-night” in a shamefaced way. Mrs. Hardacre stepped into the brougham like a somnambulist. Morland did not accompany her. He had seen enough of Mrs. Hardacre for the rest of his life.
When Jimmie went down to the studio, he saw Norma and Connie bending over a chair in the far corner. Aline had fainted.
They administered what restoratives were to hand—water and Connie's smelling-salts—and took the girl up to her bedroom, where she was left in charge of Mrs. Deering. Jimmie and Norma returned to the studio. The preoccupation of tending Aline, whose joy in the utter vindication of her splendid faith had been too sudden a strain upon an overwrought nervous system, had been welcomed almost as a relief to the emotional tenseness. They had not spoken of the things that were uppermost.
They sat down in their former places, without exchanging a remark. Jimmie took up his pipe from the table by his side, and knocked the ashes into the ash-tray and blew through it to clear it. Then he began to fill it from his old tobacco-pouch, clumsy as all covered pouches are and rough with faded clumps of moss-roses and forget-me-nots worked by Aline years before.
“Why don't you go on with the sewing?” he said.
She waited a second or two before answering, and when she spoke did not trust herself to look at him.
“I ought to say something, I know,” she said in a low voice. “But there are things one can't talk of, only feel.”
“We never need talk of them,” said Jimmie. “They are over and done with. Old, forgotten, far-off things now.”
“Are they? You don't understand. They will always remain. They make up your life. You are too big for such as me altogether. By rights I should be on my knees before you. Thank God, I did n't wait until I learned all this, but came to you in faith. I feel poor enough to hug that to myself as a virtue.”