"Why, of course I'm sure! You don't know what pals we've been.

Of course I never asked questions, but she's told me heaps and heaps of things; it would fit in with some of them, if it were true." Then I told him that it was true, and how I knew that it was true, and my reason for having kept all that knowledge to myself until now.

"I could not give her away even to you, Bob, nor yet tell you that I had known her before; for you would have been certain to ask when and how; and it was in her first husband's time, and under his name." It was a comfort to be quite honest for once with one of them, and it is a relief even now to remember that I was absolutely honest with Bob Evers about this.

He said almost at once that he would have done the same himself, and even as he spoke his whole manner changed toward me.
His face had darkened at my unexpected confirmation of the odious rumour, but already it was beginning to lighten toward me, as though he found my attitude the one redeeming feature in the new aspect of affairs.

He even thanked me for my late reserve, obviously from his heart, and in a way that went to mine on more grounds than one.