But, after all, you told me, and you were Ethne's friend." "Yours, too, I hope," Mrs.Adair answered, and she exclaimed: "How could I go on keeping silence?
Don't you understand ?" "No." Durrance might have understood, but he had never given much thought to Mrs.Adair, and she knew it.

The knowledge rankled within her, and his simple "no" stung her beyond bearing.
"I spoke brutally, didn't I ?" she said.

"I told you the truth as brutally as I could.

Doesn't that help you to understand ?" Again Durrance said "No," and the monosyllable exasperated her out of all prudence, and all at once she found herself speaking incoherently the things which she had thought.

And once she had begun, she could not stop.