“Because I love you, woman with the amber eyes, and the amber hair, and the clear amber heart,” he said gently and strongly, and took her hands in his. “And I think that you love me.”
“You are mistaken,” she said coldly, drawing away her hands.
The light went out of his face like a quenched flame. He turned away and leaned heavily on the bridge. She continued calmly:
“You merely have for me the terrible charm that a bad man has for a woman when he is the first bad man she has ever known.”
“Me?” cried Bettington, forgetting dignity and grammar and everything else in genuine astonishment. “I’m not bad! I like that! What about Stannard?”
She seemed flabbergasted for a moment, then:
“How generous you are!” she said scornfully. “Besides he is not really a bad man, only a weak one.”
“One bad man is worth forty weak ones,” averred Bettington bitterly. He was astonished and indignant at the line the conversation had taken.
“I do not deny that there is much good in you,” she said more kindly. “I can never forget how kind you have been on the journey down. When I think of all the things you did for me and Aimée I hardly know how to thank you.”
“Don’t try,” he interrupted. “I did nothing any man wouldn’t have done for you.”