"The thing came to me just now as a revelation.

Poor, dear man, how you must have suffered.

This puts us on a different footing altogether, doesn't it ?" "Altogether," he admitted.
"And," she continued, eyeing him now with a sudden nervousness, "emboldens me to ask you a question which I have been dying to ask you for the last few years.

I wonder whether you will answer it." "I wonder!" he repeated.
A change in him, too, was noticeable.

That wonderful impassivity of feature which never even in his lighter moments passed altogether away, seemed to deepen every line in his hard, clear-cut face.