Her hands were mutinous of the restraint he put upon them, and unconsciously she was beginning to pull and tug to be away from him. Also, there was fear in her eyes. He knew her fastidiousness, and he guessed, with the other man's lips recent on hers, that she feared a more ardent expression on his part. "And please, please be not frightened, timid, sweet, beautiful, proud, little bird-woman. See. I release you. Know that I love you most dearly, and that I am considering you as well as myself, and before myself, all the while." He drew his chair away from her, leaned back, and saw confidence grow in her eyes. "I shall tell you all my heart," he continued, "and I shall want you to tell me all your heart." "This love for me is something new?" she asked. "A recrudescence?" "Yes, a recrudescence, and no." "I thought that for a long time I had been a habit to you," she said. "But I was loving you all the time." "Not madly." "No," he acknowledged. "But with certainty. I was so sure of you, of myself. It was, to me, all a permanent and forever established thing. I plead guilty. But when that permanency was shaken, all my love for you fired up. It was there all the time, a steady, long-married flame." "But about me?" she demanded. "That is what we are coming to. I know your worry right now, and of a minute ago. You are so intrinsically honest, so intrinsically true, that the thought of sharing two men is abhorrent to you. I have not misread you. It is a long time since you have permitted me any love-touch." He shrugged his shoulders "And an equally long time since I offered you a love-touch." "Then you _have_ known from the first?" she asked quickly. He nodded. "Possibly," he added, with an air of judicious weighing, "I sensed it coming before even you knew it. But we will not go into that or other things." "You have seen..." she attempted to ask, stung almost to shame at thought of her husband having witnessed any caress of hers and Graham's. "We will not demean ourselves with details, Paula. Besides, there was and is nothing wrong about any of it. Also, it was not necessary for me to see anything. I have my memories of when I, too, kissed stolen kisses in the pause of the seconds between the frank, outspoken 'Good nights.' When all the signs of ripeness are visible--the love-shades and love-notes that cannot be hidden, the unconscious caress of the eyes in a fleeting glance, the involuntary softening of voices, the cuckoo-sob in the throat--why, the night-parting kiss does not need to be seen. It has to be. Still further, oh my woman, know that I justify you in everything." "It... it was not ever... much," she faltered. "I should have been surprised if it had been. It couldn't have been you. As it is, I have been surprised. After our dozen years it was unexpected--"