She hesitated.
“Because—it is not so much the memory of what I did that worries me, as the fear that—you will be ashamed of me or—or hate me—when you know.”
Herrick saw that her cheeks were flushed, but at least her mind was occupied, he reflected, and the minutes were passing.
“I could never be ashamed of you, Penelope.”
“If I were only sure of that,” she sighed, then with a great effort, and speaking low, sometimes scarcely lifting her eyes, she told her lover the story of the Fall River steamboat.
The main point was that her husband, a coarse sensualist, whom she despised, had, during the year preceding his death, accepted a chambre apart arrangement, that being the only condition on which Penelope would continue to live with him, but, on the occasion of this journey down from Newport, he had broken his promise and entered her stateroom.
“It was an oppressive night, like this,” she said, “and I had left the deck door ajar, held on a hook. I was trying to sleep, when suddenly I saw a man's arm pushed in through the opening. I shall never forget my fright, as I saw that black sleeve. Do you understand what I mean? Look!”
Gathering her draperies about her, Penelope sprang lightly out of bed and moved swiftly to the bedroom door, while Christopher, startled, followed the beauty of her sinuous form.
“His arm came through—like this,” she stepped outside the bedroom, and, reaching around the edge of the door showed her exquisite bare arm within. “See? Then my husband entered slowly and—as soon as I saw his eyes,” her agitation was increasing, “I knew what to expect. His face was flushed. He had been drinking. He looked at me and—then he locked the door—like this. I crouched away from him, I was frozen with terror, but—but—” she twined her hands in distress. “Oh, you'll hate me! I know you'll hate me!”
“No!”