-day on purpose, Mr. Trent, because I couldn't bear
it any longer. Ever since the day you left me at White Gables I have
been saying to myself that it didn't matter what you thought of me in
that affair; that you were certainly not the kind of man to speak to
others of what you believed about me, after what you had told me of your
reasons for suppressing your manuscript. I asked myself how it could
matter. But all the time, of course, I knew it did matter. It mattered
horribly. Because what you thought was not true." She raised her eyes
and met his gaze calmly. Trent, with a completely expressionless face,
returned her look.

"Since I began to know you," he said, "I have ceased to think it."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Manderson; and blushed suddenly and deeply. Then,
playing with a glove, she added: "But I want you to know what _was_
true."

"I did not know if I should ever see you again," she went on in a lower
voice, "but I felt that if I did I must speak to you about this. I
thought it would not be hard to do so, because you seemed to me an
understanding person, and besides, a woman who has been married isn't
expected to have the same sort of difficulty as a young girl in speaking
about such things when it is necessary. And then we did meet again, and
I discovered that it was very difficult indeed. You made it difficult."

"How?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know," said the lady. "But yes--I do know. It was just because
you treated me exactly as if you had never thought or imagined anything
of that sort about me. I had always supposed that if I saw you again you
would turn on me that hard, horrible sort of look you had when you asked
me that last question--do you remember?--at White Gables. Instead of
that you were just like any other acquaintance. You were just"--she
hesitated and spread her hands--"nice. You know. After that first time
at the opera when I spoke to you I went home positively wondering if you
had really recognized me. I mean, I thought you might have recognized my
face without remembering who it was."

A short laugh broke from Trent in spite of himself, but he said nothing.

She smiled deprecatingly. "Well, I couldn't remember if you had spoken
my name; and I thought it might be so. But the next time, at the
Wallaces', you did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during those
few days I almost brought myself to tell you, but never quite. I began
to feel that you wouldn't let me, that you would s