“You will tell me,” she persisted, and her voice floated across to him like the sweetest, softest music. She saw his hand tremble. “You will tell me, me alone, if you like. Have I not proved that I can be stanch? I can be secret. Tell me, and I will promise that I will never repeat it until you give me permission!”
By leaning forward she could almost touch him, and he felt rather than saw her white hand near him.
He dropped his hand from his eyes with a cry that was like a smothered groan.
“I cannot!” he said, simply.
She fell back a little. She was still weak, and the excitement was telling upon her.
“Ah, how hard you are with me! How distrustful!” and she gave a piteous little sigh. “I thought that I had only to come to you, only to ask you, and that you would have told me—me!”
He leaned his head upon his hands, and sat like one tried almost beyond endurance.
“If,” she went on in a low, soft voice, every note of which rang in his heart—“if I had been in your place, and you had come to me and asked me to confide in you, as I now ask you, do you think I would have refused? No! I could not have done so! See,” she pleaded, touching him timidly, tenderly, “see how little it is I ask! I do not want you to tell me why you have refused any explanation to the world at large; no, I don’t do that! I only ask you to tell me the name of the man for whom you are enduring all this, whose burden of crime you are bearing—will you not do that? Can you refuse me?” She glided nearer to him imperceptibly. Before he knew it she was on her knees at his side, her hand, soft and quivering as a bird, upon his arm. “Ah, tell me! Tell me!” she murmured.
He took her hand and held it in both his, his white face working like a man’s in a mortal agony, his eyes gazing into hers with intense entreaty.
“Oh, don’t ask me! don’t, don’t!” he said, hoarsely. “I cannot tell you! It is impossible! Will you believe that? If you knew what it costs me to refuse you! If you knew how I dread that you should come to think me guilty——”