He turned back. He tried to meet her eyes.
"Things can"t be the same," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I know I"m a beast to speak of it. I know you expect me to take what you did in the cellar as acting. But, Nora, lying there as I was, it made me happier than I ever have been in my life."
He looked straight at her.
"Tell me how you managed such acting."
Her lips trembled.
"I--I think n.o.body could act like that."
He saw the tears in her eyes. She closed them.
"While I was doing it," she went on, "it came to me that it wasn"t acting at all."
There was no one to see the quick surrender of her hands.