The glimpse of Conway Castle from the train cheered them a little. The sight of the sea did more--but still he felt a cloud between them, and still she felt more and more that he was aware of it. Charles sat between them, as before, and over that stout white back his eyes met hers.
"What is it?" he asked, suddenly. "Yesterday I thought it was the half-timber and the rain--this morning I thought it was yesterday, but it isn't. Something's happened that you haven't told me."
She turned her eyes from his and stroked the flappy white ears of Charles.
"Hasn't it?" he urged. "Ah, you will tell me, won't you? Was it something from the aunts?"
For there had been letters that morning, sent on from Warwick.
"No, the letters were all right. Everybody's furious except Aunt Alice, but she's the only one that matters."
"It's almost gone," she said. "Oh, look at the rocks and the heather on that great hill."
"Then there was something," he said; "something you won't tell me."
"Can't? Something that's happened and you can't tell me?"
He remembered how on the last night at Warwick he had held that hand of hers against his face. They had seemed so very near then. And now there was a gulf suddenly opened between them--the impassable gulf of a secret--a secret that was hers and not his.
"Yes, something did happen and I have promised not to tell you. If ever I can, I will."
"Something has come between us and you have promised not to tell me what it is?"
"Oh no--no!" she said, very earnestly, and her dear eyes looked full in his. "Nothing has come between us--nothing could--"
He realized, with some impatience, that Charles, at least, was between them. But for Charles he could, quite naturally and _ayant l'air de rien_ have leaned a little toward her as he spoke--so that his shoulder might, perhaps, if she had leaned also, have just touched hers. But across Charles this could not be. And to lean, after the removal of Charles, would bear an air of premeditation not to be contemplated for an instant.
"If it's nothing that comes between us--" he said. "But even then, it's something that's made you sad, made you different. I suppose, though, it's unreasonable to expect that there shall be no secrets between any two human beings, no matter how--how friendly they are," he ended, with conscious lameness.