"It is some years since I trod these flags," said Cullen. "Well, I am glad to come home, though it is only as an outcast; and indeed, Helen, I have not the right even to call it home."
It was as cruel a remark as he could well have made, seeing at what pains the girl had been, and still was, to restore that home to him. That it hurt her I knew very well, for I heard her, in the darkness of the passage, draw in her breath through her clenched teeth. Cullen walked along the passage and through the hall.
"Lock the door," Helen said to me, and I did lock it. "Now drop the bar."
When that was done we walked together into the hall, where she stopped.
"Look at me," she said, "please!" and I obeyed her.
"You have come back," she repeated. "You do not, then, any longer believe that I deceived you?"
"There is a reason why I have come back," I answered. It was a reason which I could not give to her. I was resolved not to suffer her to lie at the mercy of Cullen Mayle. Fortunately, she did not think to ask me to be particular about the reason. But she beat her hands once or twice together, and--
"You still believe it, then!" she cried. "With these two months to search and catch and hold the truth, you still hold me in the same contempt as when you turned your back on me and walked out through that door?"
"No, no!" I exclaimed. "Contempt! That never entered into any thought I ever had of you. Make sure of that!"
"Yet you believe I tricked you. How can you believe that, and yet spare me your contempt!"