Angela flung her hands up, then dropped them hopelessly. With no attempt to hide her tear-blurred face she answered: "I sent him away because I am married. I said 'It is impossible'; not—what he seems to think I said."
"Oh, how sad!" The little school-teacher was confronting real tragedy for the first time in her gray, conscientious existence. "How sorry I am. Forgive me! But—you know, it isn't I who matter."
"No," Angela echoed. "It isn't you."
"You didn't tell him? You gave him no idea?"
"I hadn't a chance. There'd been an evening, a little while before, when I'd meant to tell if—if anything happened. But—we were interrupted."
"He thinks you're a young widow."
"Yes. It's only in the sight of the world that I have a husband—that I ever had one. When I came to America I left the man for good, and took another name."
"'Mrs. May' isn't your real name?"
"No. I'll tell you if you like——"
"You needn't. But you ought to tell him. That, and everything. I don't mean confess, or anything like that. Probably you thought, till you fell in love with him, that there was no reason why you should give him your secrets. What I mean is—oh, the difference it would make to Mr. Hilliard, knowing that you sent him away, not because you looked down on him as common and impossible, but because you had no right to care!"