“Why?” she said dully. “Because he wrote me a letter—because he believed me capable of doing things behind his back—not perhaps because it would have been a wrong thing, but because he did not trust me.”
“Ah—because he did not trust you,” said Steve, in full, deep tones, and again,“—he did not ... trust you.”
“No,” she said wearily, as if the thing were distasteful to her, “and no matter what proof——”
Swiftly his hand fell again on hers and cut short her words. “No matter what proof ...” he repeated after her again, stooping to peer at her face in the darkness.
Again the song of the river ran unbroken, till she turned to him with a quick movement and her voice trembling.
“Steve, I see it now. I must have trust, and I must give it, and there can be no happiness between or without. And I give it now—oh, believe me I give it, full and free, as I know it is given to me. Who or what the woman was I neither know nor care. You had a right and a reason, and none that you would be ashamed to tell, for her being there.”
He slipped an arm about her shoulders and a hand beneath her chin, and gently tilted her face until he could look down into her eyes.
“No reason,” he said, “that I cannot tell my promised wife, but can tell only to her. Have I the promise, Ess?”
He saw her eyes slowly close, and heard, and no more than heard, the soft whispered “Yes,” that was light as the sigh of a leaf lifting in the breeze, or the kiss of a wave on the lake shore; and he pressed his kiss warm upon her lips, and felt her answering kiss and the clinging of her arms. “I’ll say it in few words and quick,” he said, “for then I have other, and better, and sweeter things to say. They were good friends to me, and when they heard of my plight they came to me—a man and his wife—and brought me food, and tended my wounds, in turns as the chance offered. And they came by night because I was hunted, and we—they as much as I, and now, as it happens, more than I—risked much by their coming. If you had come alone that night I could have told you, but I dared not let the man be seen or known by another man who I felt was my enemy. The man was there then, and I made him promise to tell nothing even to his wife of what passed....”
In the dim light he could see a faint smile flickering on her lips. “Go on,” she said softly; “and why was the man not to tell his wife?”