His voice was low and gentle; he avoided her eyes as he spoke, though he knew they were upon him, watching him closely. He had come to this curious searching talk--or rather it had come upon him--totally unprepared. She had not been much in his thoughts lately; when he had thought of her, it had been in relation to the past, or to the household at Hilsey. Her present and future life had been remote, out of his ken, perhaps relegated to neglect by an instinctive repugnance, by a latent but surviving jealousy. Now he was faced with it, without time to consider, to get a clear view--much less to find diplomatic or dexterous phrases. If he were to say anything in reply to the questions with which Bernadette pressed him--and he could hardly be dumb--there was nothing for it but to give her bluntly what he thought, his raw reading of the position as it stood, the best he could make of it on the spur of the moment, without looking far forward, or anticipating future modifications and weighing the possible effect of them, and without going into any of the ethics of the case, without moral judgments or a casuistry nicely balancing the rights and wrongs of it; all that seemed futile, arrogant, not for him anyhow. The real present question was how the state of affairs which had come into being affected him in regard to Bernadette, what it left open to them. It was on that point that her questions pressed him so closely and sharply. What did she expect? A resumption of her empire over him? That the idol should be re-erected in the shrine, pieced together again and put in place to receive its worship? Then she could not understand all that had gone to the making and the adoration of it. The flight had brought mighty changes in and for her--had she not herself said so? In and for him was it to make none? She could hardly expect or claim that. Yet her questions, her resentment, a forlorn pettishness which had crept into her voice and manner, suggested that she was feeling hardly used, that she was disappointed and in some measure affronted by his attitude. She seemed to pit herself against Hilsey--against the household and the home she had elected to leave, for reasons good or bad, under impulses whether irresistible or merely wayward--to pit herself against it with something like scorn, even with jealousy. Had she not herself been all in all to him at Hilsey? Had it not been to him a setting for her charm and fascination, dear to him for her sake? The others there--what had they been to him? Oh, friends, yes, friends and kinsfolk, of course! But essentially, in his real thoughts, her attendants, her satellites--and largely the grievances against which his adoration had protested.