But what need was there of assuming an
explicit statement, when every breath they had drawn for the
last weeks had been charged with the immanent secret? As she
looked back over the days since Darrow's first arrival at
Givre she perceived that at no time had any one deliberately
spoken, or anything been accidentally disclosed. The truth
had come to light by the force of its irresistible pressure;
and the perception gave her a startled sense of hidden
powers, of a chaos of attractions and repulsions far beneath
the ordered surfaces of intercourse. She looked back with
melancholy derision on her old conception of life, as a kind
of well-lit and well policed suburb to dark places one need
never know about. Here they were, these dark places, in her
own bosom, and henceforth she would always have to traverse
them to reach the beings she loved best!
She was still sitting beside the untouched tea-table when
she heard Darrow's voice in the hall. She started up,
saying to herself: "I must tell him that Owen knows..." but
when the door opened and she saw his face, still lit by the
same smile of boyish triumph, she felt anew the uselessness
of speaking...Had he ever supposed that Owen would not know?
Probably, from the height of his greater experience, he had
seen long since that all that happened was inevitable; and
the thought of it, at any rate, was clearly not weighing on
him now.
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