“You confessed to me once—here in this room—” He hesitated, sought for words in which to clothe the thing, words that would carry no bitterness, no accusation, none of the horror the fact had brought to him. “You said you loved me, but could marry no man.”
“Yes, I said it,” she replied.
“Was it true?”
“It was true—then.”
“Then?... It is not true now?”
“It is not true now.... I was defiled.”
“That was the word.”
“God had burned away the defilement.”
He groped for her meaning; it was hidden from him.
“What do you mean?”