“Yes,” he said. “Norman has told me everything; the scales have fallen from my eyes; I see now that you were as pure as a lily, and incapable of what I deemed you guilty.”
She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them she looked at him through a mist of tears.
“I have come to ask you to forgive me, Esmeralda,” he said, “to tell you that I love you, have loved you from the beginning. But do not be afraid. I know how easy it is to kill love; that though you may have loved me, my cruelty to you may have slain that love outright.”
She did not speak; and, after a moment, he went on, with bent head and eyes fixed on the ground, as if he dreaded to read his sentence in her face.
“If you wish it, I will go away again, and leave you in peace. I could not go until I had told you with my own lips—until I had confessed to you, and tried to obtain your forgiveness. I know that I do not deserve it, but I know, dear, how tender your heart is, and that you will not let me go without your forgiveness.”
She was silent for a moment, then she whispered: “I forgive you.” Her heart was throbbing with this new delicious joy, but perhaps because of the very depth and intensity of her emotion, her tone sounded constrained and even cold. And he had been hoping against hope for just a hint of tenderness, of love.
He stifled a sigh, and rose. He would steal away now, and leave her; he would not harass her and make her ill again by an emotional leave-taking. She had forgiven him, it was true; but it was evident by the tone of her voice that he had slain love outright. He forgot at that moment, or, in his timidity and self-reproach, did not attach significance to the fact that she had thrown herself between him and Varley’s avenging bullet. When a man loves as passionately as Trafford loved, he is always doubtful and despairing; it seems too much to hope that his love should be returned. He stood beside the hammock looking down at her—looking at the face with its downcast lids, with its flower-like mouth, the lips apart as if she were breathing painfully. The murmur of the bees filled the silence with a subtle harmony, the scent of the flowers in her lap stole over his senses; he thought that for all the years he should live, that Providence should lay upon him as a burden, he must think of her as she lay there in her beauty; and that the sound of the bees, the scent of the flowers, would ever be with him, to torment and torture him with a mocking reminder of all that he had lost. She was his wife, his lawful wife, and yet as divided from him as if she were a perfect stranger!
She had moved slightly, and the pillow had slipped a little. He noticed this, and instinctively he stretched out his hand to put it in its place, to make her more comfortable, as he would have done in the past; then he remembered, and let his hand fall to his side again; but the displaced pillow harassed him. Surely, he might put it straight before he went? He would do it very gently—perhaps she would not shrink from him.
“Your pillow has slipped,” he said, trying to speak calmly, and, indeed, in quite a casual way.
“It does not matter,” she said; and, for the same reason as before, her tone was constrained and cold.