There had been in Alice's words, as she told him of their proposed plan, a something that had betrayed a tremor in her thoughts. She had studiously striven so to frame her phrases that her tale might be told as any other simple statement,--as though there had been no trembling in her mind as she wrote. But she had failed, and she knew that she had failed. She had failed; and he had read all her effort and all her failure. 
When Alice had told him of their plan, she had tried to make it a simple, ordinary statement; but she knew that she had failed, and that he had read her failure. 