Was she glad of this solitude?  Had she sought it?  Her extraordinary request in that earlier solitude came to him, and he spoke of it while he tried to control his emotions, while he sought to mould the next few minutes reasonably and justly.

“Why did you tell me to make no attempt to find the guilty person?”

“Because,” she answered, “you were too sure it was yourself.  Why, Bobby, did you think I was the—­the woman in black?  That has hurt me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, “but there is something I must tell you now that may hurt you a little.”

And he explained how Graham had awakened him at the head of the stairs.

“You’re right,” he said.  “I was sure then it was myself, in spite of Howells’s movement.  It followed so neatly on the handkerchief and the footmarks.  But now he has come back, and it changes everything.  So I can tell you.”

He couldn’t be sure whether it was the cold, white loneliness through which they paced, or what he had just said that made her tremble.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“I am glad,” she answered.  “You must never close your confidence to me again.  Why have you done it these last few months?  I want to know.”

Calculation died.

“Then you shall know.”

Through the white night his hands reached for her, found her, drew her close.  The moment was too masterful for him to mould.  He became, instead, plastic in its white and stealthy grasp.

“I couldn’t stay,” he said, “and see you give yourself to Hartley.”

She raised her hands to his shoulders.  He barely caught her whisper because of the sly communicativeness of the snow.

“I am glad, but why didn’t you say so then?”

The intoxication faded.  The enterprise ahead gave to their joy a fugitive quality.  Moreover, with her very surrender came to him a great misgiving.

“But you and Hartley?  I’ve watched.  It’s been forced on me.”

“Then you have misunderstood,” she answered.  “You put me too completely out of your life after our quarrel.  That was about Hartley.  You were too jealous, but it was my fault.”

“Hartley,” he asked, “spoke to you about that time?”

“Yes, and I told him he was a very dear friend, and he was kind enough to accept that and not to go away.”

His measure of the widening of the rift between them made her more precious because of its affectionate human quality.  She had been kinder to Graham, more mysterious about him, to draw Bobby back.  Yet ever since his arrival at the Cedars, Graham had assumed toward Katherine an attitude scarcely to be limited by friendship.  He had done what he had in Bobby’s service clearly enough for her sake.  For a long time past, indeed, in speaking of her Graham always seemed to discuss the woman he expected to marry.

“You are quite sure,” he asked, puzzled, “that Hartley understood?”