Then Loder stepped forward.
"You knew--for four years?" he said, very slowly. For the
first time that night he remembered Chilcote and forgot
himself.
Eve lifted her head with a quick gesture--as if, in flinging
off discretion and silence, she appreciated to the full the
new relief of speech.
"Yes, I knew. Perhaps I should have spoken when I first
surprised the secret, but it's all so past that it's useless
to speculate now. It was fate, I suppose. I was very young,
you were very unapproachable, and--and we had no love to make
the way easy." For a second her glance faltered and she
looked away. "A woman's--a girl's--disillusioning is a very
sad comedy--it should never have an audience." She laughed a
little bitterly as she looked back again. "I saw all the
deceits, all the subterfuges, all the--lies." She said the
word deliberately, meeting his eyes.
Again he thought of Chilcote, but his face paled.
"I saw it all. I lived with it all till I grew hard and
indifferent--till I acquiesced in your 'nerves' as readily as
the rest of the world that hadn't suspected and didn't know.
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