“To save your soul, my child. It is in great, great peril…”
“Am I, then, so very wicked? Surely heaven doesn’t want me yet, John. Some day, I trust … I hope—”
“To-night, to-night, now!”
Then her cheeks turned pale and her lips became white and bloodless.
Trembling from head to foot, she stepped up to him again, and began softly and sweetly, trying to explain herself. “John, dear John, if you see me with certain people and in certain places, you must not think from that—”
But he broke in upon her with a torrent of words… Out of a dry and husky throat John Storm answered, “I would rather die a thousand, thousand deaths than touch a hair of your head, Glory… But God’s will is His will,” he added, quivering and trembling.
“We are of different natures, John, that is the real trouble between us now, and always has been. But, whether we like it or not, our lives are wrapped up together for all that. We can’t do without each other. God makes men and women like that sometimes.”
There was a piteous smile on his face. “I never doubted your feeling for me, Glory—no, not even when you hurt me most.”
“And if God makes us so—”
“I shall never forgive myself, Glory, though heaven itself forgives me!”