He stopped. For he saw she understood.
"You always understood," he went on, voicing his thought. "That was one of the wonderful things about you, Kitty. Even now, you saw the pain I am in. And it made you forget what you believe I am. It was sweet of you. It will be good to remember."
"I wish I could help you," she said.
"You have helped me," he answered. "For you've given me a Memory to carry till I can shake off the load—till I can get clear of McPherson's 'man-built hell.' It won't be long. So don't worry. Even now, my common sense tells me I've made a fool of myself. And I'm human enough to be more ashamed of being a fool than of being a knave. I had everything in my own hands. And I threw away the game because an attack of fright kept me from playing my winning cards. Last night I was afraid of a ghost. This morning I'm sane enough to know that ghosts were invented by the first nervous man who was alone at night. This morning I am heart-broken because my little boy lies dead. To-morrow I shall be sane enough to know that it is as lucky for me as it is for him, that he died. And in a week I'll be congratulating myself over it all and revelling in a freedom and a fortune I've always craved. So you see I'm quite incurable."
"Why do you say such things?" she cried. "You know they aren't true."
"When I said you 'always understand,' Kitty, I was wrong. You don't understand. No woman understands—that a man doesn't reform. A good man may have taken a wrong twist. And when he finds his way back to the straight road, they say he has 'reformed.' He hasn't. He's only struck his own natural gait again. As he was bound to. And my kind of man sometimes takes a momentary twist in the right direction. Then people say he has reformed. And they are just as much mistaken as they were in the other case. For, water won't run uphill after the first pressure is withdrawn."
"But in the fires of affliction——"
"The fires of affliction," he retorted sadly, "have burned away the dross from the pure gold of many a soul, I suppose. But no fires were ever heated that could burn dross fiercely enough to turn it into gold. Yet——"
He hesitated, then said, without daring to look at her:
"There's one thing I do want you to know, Kitty. Whatever I was and am, and whatever shams went to make up my daily life here—you know my love for you was true and absolute and that I loved and love you more than the whole world besides?"