"Well?" Aggie forced the word again through her tight, strained lips.
"I'm not blaming you, Aggie, dear. I know it isn't your fault."
"Whose is it, then?"
Susie's soft face hardened, and she said nothing.
Her silence lay between them; silence that had in it a throbbing heart of
things unutterable; silence that was an accusation, a judgment of the man
that Aggie loved.
Then Aggie turned, and in her immortal loyalty she lied.
"I never told him."
"Never told him? Oh, my dear, you were very wrong."
"Why should I? He was ill. It would have worried him. It worried me less
to keep it to myself."
"But--the risk?"
"Oh," said Aggie, sublimely, "we all take it. Some of us don't know. I
did. That's all."
She drew a deep breath of relief and satisfaction. For four months, ever
since she had known that some such scene as this must come, she had known
that she would meet it this way.
"Hush," she said. "I think I hear the children."