He remembered how on the last night at Warwick he had held that hand of hers against his face. They had seemed so very near then. And now there was a gulf suddenly opened between them--the impassable gulf of a secret--a secret that was hers and not his. "Yes, something did happen and I have promised not to tell you. If ever I can, I will." "Something has come between us and you have promised not to tell me what it is?" "Oh no--no!" she said, very earnestly, and her dear eyes looked full in his. "Nothing has come between us--nothing could--" He realized, with some impatience, that Charles, at least, was between them. But for Charles he could, quite naturally and _ayant l'air de rien_ have leaned a little toward her as he spoke--so that his shoulder might, perhaps, if she had leaned also, have just touched hers. But across Charles this could not be. And to lean, after the removal of Charles, would bear an air of premeditation not to be contemplated for an instant. "If it's nothing that comes between us--" he said. "But even then, it's something that's made you sad, made you different. I suppose, though, it's unreasonable to expect that there shall be no secrets between any two human beings, no matter how--how friendly they are," he ended, with conscious lameness. "Of course it's unreasonable," she said; "it would mean, wouldn't it, that neither of us could ever be trusted by any one else? Whereas now people can tell you things they wouldn't want to tell me, and tell me things they wouldn't care about telling you." "Then this--I'm not worrying you to tell me--but if it is somebody else's secret--" "Well, it is," she said. "Now, are you satisfied? And if you'll only let me look at the sea and the mountains and the heather the Chester cloud will go right away. It's nearly gone now. And I've never seen any real mountains before, not mountains like these, with warm colors and soft shapes--only the Pyrenees and the Maritime Alps, and they look just like white cardboard cut into points and pasted on blue sugar-paper--that's the sky." "It's prettier at sunrise, with the mountains like pink and white sugar, and Corsica showing like a little cloud over the sea. We had a villa at Antibes when I was a little chap, before we lost our money. We'll go there again some day, shall we, and see if the mountains have changed at all? Not this winter, I think. I've never had an English winter free from work I didn't like. I must have just this one. You don't mind?" What he hoped she wouldn't mind was less the English winter than his calm assumption that there was plenty of time, that they would always be together and might go where they would and when--since all the future was before them--all the future, and each other's companionship all through it. "Why should I mind?" she answered. "I've never had a free winter in England, either, or anywhere else, for that matter."