"Perhaps."

"Oh, surely. This is all, Ann."

"I wish you had been less discreet long ago, James. I think that the
Bishop knowing how sensitive, how very reticent Mark is, meant only that
he should not learn what was confided to you."

"I never thought of that, Ann. You may be right."

She made no further comment, except to say, "But to know clears the air
and leaves me free to talk to him at need." Penhallow felt that where he
himself might be a useless confessor, his wife was surely to be trusted.

"If, Ann, the man could only be got on to the back of a horse--" She won
the desirable relief of laughter, and the eyes that were full of the
tears of pity for this disastrous life overflowed of a sudden with mirth
at the Squire's one remedy for the troubles of this earthly existence.

"Oh, I am in earnest," he said. "Now I must write to John."

When after a week or more she did talk to Mark Rivers, he was the better
for it and felt free to speak to her as a younger man may to an older
woman and can rarely do to the closest of male friends, for, after all,
most friendships have their personal limitations and the man who has not
both men and women friends may at some time miss what the double
intimacies alone can give.

* * * * *