"Yes," he said quietly, "I've had--news." At the frozen calmness of his
tones she shrank back as one shrinks from the numbing cold of the still air
that hangs above black ice.
"What is it?" she breathed. "Not bad news--for us?"
Her eyes were fastened on his face, searching it wildly. A quick and
terrible fear clamoured at her heart. Was there something in the past,
something of which she had no knowledge, that could arise--_now_--to
separate them from each other? That long-ago episode which had wrecked his
youth--had the woman who had figured in it some material hold upon him?
Could she--was it possible she could still come between them in some way?
Ann had heard of such things. It seemed to her as though, betwixt herself
and Eliot, there hovered a dim, formless shadow, vague and nebulous--a
shadow which had crept silently out from some memory-haunted corner of the
past.
"Not bad news--for us?" she repeated quiveringly.
"That depends upon how you choose to regard it," he replied. "Ann"--the
ice broke up and he came to the point with a suddenness that was almost
brutal--"why haven't you been straight with me?"
"Straight with you?" she repeated wonderingly.
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