"How?—how has he punished you? I think I do not understand. Through Philip, do you mean?"
"No. Not through Philip—not through Philip! Through Philip's mother."
The room lapsed into silence then. Her heart was beating so that it seemed to her that he must hear the throbs. It was impossible to mistake his meaning.
"I count it part of my humiliation," he said in proud self-abasement,—"and I will not spare myself—that I must come at the last to the woman I have persecuted, the woman I have hunted down and robbed, the woman I have in my heart held guilty of foul crime—and tell her—that—I love her!"
She did not stir nor look at him.
Then his mood changed, and from his stand by the mantel he regarded her with a sort of grim humor.
"This surely is the irony of fate," he went on, speaking almost as if in soliloquy, "that I should come to you with tale of love!... Margaret, why don't you taunt me with my weakness—jeer at me—say the biting, scathing things you must want to say? This certainly is your opportunity. It would complete your victory."
"There is no victory," she said in a dead tone, "it is all defeat."
He was filled with contrition.
"Forgive me. I seem to have an infinite capacity for being cruel. And yet,—how can I make you understand that I would give all I hold dear if I could have the right to shield you? How can I expect you to believe— ... Why, Margaret! even the boy—the boy—has crept into my heart and intrenched himself until I cannot put him out."