"Oh, it was hard! it was hard!" she said, laying her forehead on his shoulder; "for I thought you loved me! I thought you loved me!"
He drew her head close to his bosom, but said nothing; self-reproach held his heart in silence.
"With this hope of seeing you again, rising above every thing, it was a cruel thought that you might come home and find me there, think perhaps that I had harmed your child."
"No, Katharine—no, I never could have believed that. In my most insane moments I knew and felt how good you were."
"But these thoughts would come to me in my prison, Nelson; I could not help that. So I struggled against that hard fate and wanted to die. The people were wrong and harsh with me, the law was wrong, the judges were wrong, but God was right."
"I—I was the most cruel of all," said Thrasher, in a low, pained voice.
"Still it was all needful. What else would have won me from home to live among those poor convicts, to help them and feel for them, till a beautiful happiness sprang up to me out of those dreary mines. Then, then," she added, with a gush of tender gratitude, "just as I had learned to live and endure for others, knowing that God's wisdom was higher than man's justice, you came, my husband, and I had the power to help you. I so weak, and you so strong! From that day I knew how great a blessing had been won for me, out of what seemed the deadly ruin of a life. In that black depth I found the heart of my husband."
"Oh, a worthless, wicked heart, Katharine!"
"But it was mine—all mine!"
He girded her closer with his arm, and that was answer enough.