THE SUPERB MOMENT
nothing I'll ever see will even come near him! And I've been after him so long!"
"Why didn't you tell me?" she said.
He was silent. That question seemed to him to answer itself. He heard a stir behind him, and a breath drawn in like a sob. He had forgotten the third presence, which all the while had been behind him and silent; but now inarticulately audible, sounded an echo to her daughter's cry—understanding of it, confirmation.
"If I had wanted something of you," Blanche insisted in her rapid uneven voice, "I would have gone to you. Why didn't you come to me? Why did you go to them? And they—oh, oh!" She took her head between her hands. "I can't understand it! He has been my friend all my life. I've been so sure of my father. I told him everything; yet he told you, the moment he saw you, everything." She raised her eyes to the little dusty window high up the stable walls as if beyond that she could see the other not present presence. "I've known him ever since I was a little girl, and trusted him, and he said he loved me; but he told you, the moment he saw you, everything." She turned to Carron. "And I am yours, am I? I thought I was closer to you than to any one in the world. I showed you what I loved because I thought that you, you too—"
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