"Poor little thing! So she funked telling me."
The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed to her.
"But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?" He smiled with that peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was concealing pain.
"One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same," she added, with an impulse she could not repress, "I'm sorry to be always associated in your mind with things that must be hard for you."
"You're associated in my mind with everything that's high and noble. That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have found the way."
"Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain things a little better than Evie could."
"I don't imagine that they require much explanation. I've seen from Evie's letters that--"
"That she was afraid of--the situation. She hasn't changed toward you."
"Do you mean by that that she still--cares anything about me?"
"I'm not entitled to an opinion. It's something you and she must work out together. All I can do is to tell you what may give you a little hope."
She watched for the brightening effect of these words upon him, but he sat looking absently at the floor, as if he had not heard them.
"Evie is afraid," she continued, "but I think it's only fair to remember that the circumstances might well frighten any young girl of her sort."
He showed that he followed her by nodding assent, though he neither lifted his head nor spoke.
"She wanted me to tell you that while the--the trial--and other things--are going on, she couldn't be engaged to you--I'm using her own expression, but she didn't say that, when it was all over and you were free, she wouldn't marry you. I noticed that."
"I mean that when it's all over, and everything has ended as you hope it will, it may be quite possible for you to win her back."
He stared at her, with an incredulous lifting of the eyebrows
"It isn't a matter I could give advice about. I'm showing you what might be possible, but--"
"No, no. That sort of thing doesn't work. There was just a chance that Evie might have stuck to me spontaneously but since she didn't--"