A quiver crossed her face, but she did not look up. "It's not my fault that you have—waited," she murmured.
The man made a rueful gesture. "Oh, you need not tell me that," he said. "If you had had your way, you would have sent me—back to South Africa, I believe." He broke off with a bitter laugh. As if in spite of herself, a smile flickered beneath her drooping lids.
"Not quite so far, perhaps." The words sounded with a demure accent. But in an instant the smile vanished, her lip quivered, she looked up at him with a tremulous earnestness. "Ah, can't you understand," she cried, "why I want you to go? Haven't I brought you trouble enough? Do you think that now"—she paused and caught her breath—"now that all this disgrace has come upon me," she went on with an effort, "do you think I would burden you with it?"
"Disgrace!"—He flushed hotly.—"I don't know why there should be disgrace," he said, "when every one knows now—even those idiots who doubted you—how baseless the whole miserable accusation was."
"People don't reason." She sighed wearily. "There will always be a cloud over me—I feel it even here. People at The Mills stare at me, the Neighborhood"—she smiled painfully—"the Neighborhood feels that I have brought upon it eternal discredit. Ah, you can't blame them"—as Gerard muttered under his breath an ejaculation. "It will be the same in town—everywhere. People will always remember that I was horribly talked about, that I have been in prison. For myself"—her lip trembled—"I'm hardened, but for you"—
"For me"—he put out his hand and took hers determinedly into his strong grasp—"for me it is inevitable that, whatever troubles you have, I must share them."
There was silence for a moment. They stood facing each other, the only actors in the peaceful country scene; the man strong, determined, his eyes aglow with the fire of mastery; the woman pale, drooping, exhausted, yet still with some power in her weakness, that opposed itself to his strength. She put out her hand at last in a gesture of entreaty. "Ah, don't let us go all over this again," she pleaded. "Don't make it so hard for me. It's hard enough"—The words seemed to escape her unawares.
"Ah!" A gleam of triumph crossed his face. "It is hard, then?"
"Most things are hard."—She spoke with recovered firmness.—"Life is hard, but one must—bear it. At least I'll try to bear it—alone. The only amends I can make to you"—she clasped her hands suddenly in a passionate gesture of renunciation—"the only atonement is to efface myself, to sink out of your life as if I had never—been in it." She paused, her breath came in convulsive gasps, but still she faced him resolute, the look in her eyes with which some penitent of the early church might have welcomed lifelong immolation. "To efface myself," she repeated, dwelling upon the words as if they held some painful satisfaction, "to sink out of your life—it is the only atonement I can make."
"You can't make it." Gerard's words rang out clearly. He took her hands again resolutely in his. "You can't efface yourself," he said. "It's beyond your power." A smile flickered across his face, his eyes looked into hers with an imperious tenderness, before which they fell abashed. "Do you know," he said, "why I went off in that idiotic fashion into the wilds, tried to cut myself off from the world? I was bitter, angry—I wanted to forget you; I thought, if there were nothing to remind me of you, I might. And then day and night I thought of you, day and night your face haunted me.... Ah, Elizabeth"—his voice broke—"ask me to do anything except—forget you."