"For five long years I have believed you a murderess, and have given you no chance to vindicate yourself!"
It seemed almost as if he were mocking her, but she knew from the wretchedness of his face that he was simply pleading guilty.
"This then is the explanation of it all—why you have followed me so pitilessly—why—"
"Margaret, listen to me!" he cried, throwing off the incubus that was upon him. "Let me add my part to the pitiful story you heard upstairs before you pass final judgment. Then I will go away—out of your life forever."
"You cannot go away out of my life forever," she said passionately, remembering Philip. "It is too late for that! When one thrusts himself into the life of another he cannot leave it at his will. Neither can he escape the consequences of his acts by turning his back upon them."
"True! Too true!" he answered mournfully. There was a note of such utter misery in his voice that it touched her heart.
"I hope you will believe me when I tell you that not one word of that poor girl's story was ever known to me before. Had it been, I should not have left it to you to befriend her and care for her child. I had always known that Victor was wild and reckless, but young men seldom make confidants of their mentors. I did not pry into his affairs. I think perhaps I knew in a general way that they would not bear it, and—I shrank from it. I do not expect you to understand my feeling toward Victor. Wayward as he had always been, I yet loved him. There was good in the boy. I believe now that had he lived you might have won him to a better life. I had hoped until that hour that it might be. But with life snuffed out, his day was done. And it was your hand had struck him down!"
She shook her head in sorrowful protest.
"I know—I know. But to me—in all these years—it was your hand." He spoke in fragments, with silences in between. "You asked me that day what he said. Perhaps if I should tell you now it would be some extenuation at least."
She looked up at him breathless. "What was it?"