Perhaps in time he forgot what he had read in the depths of her terror-stricken eyes as he had emerged from behind the screen.

There had been no thought of him at that moment in those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love.
Or perhaps he had _not_ forgotten, and had realised that her love for him was very slenderly built.

Perhaps it was the foreshadow of that realisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, before the trial, that she would not speak.
Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain his love for Fay.

He did it again during that first year in prison.

He saw that she was not capable of love as he understood it.