“Oh, you don’t know,” said Camelia, clasping her hands and looking down at them, “you don’t know. Even you don’t know how wicked I have been.”
“We all have such dark closets in our hearts. Don’t shut yourself in yours.”
“I don’t shut myself. I am locked in. That is my punishment. Michael,” and she looked round at him without turning her head, “I think of nothing else; that I made her miserable—that I made her glad to die. I must tell you. You don’t know how I treated her. I remember it all now—years and years—so plainly. I robbed her of everything. If a sunbeam fell on her path I stood between her and it.”
Perior was silent, but putting his hand over hers he held it faithfully.
“Listen. Let me tell you a few—only a few—of the things I remember. I don’t know why you love me!—how you can love me! It hurts me to be loved!” she sobbed suddenly.
“If it will help you, tell me everything. And I must love you, even if it hurts you.”
And, her hand in that faithful hand, her eyes on his, demanding inflexible judgment, Camelia began the long confession—a piteous tale, indeed. All the blots and failings gathered in a huge blackness; she spoke from it. He felt as she spoke that the clasp of his hand was her one link with revival. It was a piteous tale: for the robbery of Mary’s ride, the brutal taunts flung at her on that winter night—these were but the bigger drops in the sea of selfish thoughtlessness. After each incident, rounded with a succinct psychology that showed her pitiless clearness of vision, she paused, as if waiting for him to speak. His silence seemed to acquiesce, and she wanted no soothing denial. And even now his hand held hers, and did not cast her off. When she had done, and after the silence had grown long, he said—
“And so I might lay bare my heart to you.”
“I would not be afraid of its dark corner. You have never been meanly selfish, never trodden on people.”
“But I might affirm other things. I will open the door if it will help you to sit down with me in the doubled darkness.”