‘Helped me,’ he repeated stonily. ‘The words are plain enough.’
There was a garden-seat near at hand. She hastened to it, and sinking down upon it, seemed to surrender herself to tears. He moved moodily after her, and stood looking down at the pathway, tracing haphazard figures on its moss-grown surface with the cane he carried.
‘I understand you now,’ sobbed Gertrude. ‘I have a right to reproach myself because my own undisciplined heart has gone beyond control sometimes; but does it lie in your province, Paul, to blame me for that? Have I not an equal right,’ she went on, ‘to tell you that you have not helped me in the daily struggle I have had to make? You are unjust, you are ungenerous. I could never have believed it of you.’
‘I can foresee nothing,’ Paul said, ‘but misery.’
‘Nor can I,’ she answered. She rose and faced him, and in the patch of moonlight in which she stood he could see that her tears at least were real. ‘What you have to say to me, in effect,’ she said, with an air of sudden quiet dignity, but with a quiver in her voice, ‘is just this: that I am a heartless coquette, and have never cared for you; that I have wilfully lured you on to your own unhappiness. If you really think that, Paul, if it means anything more than a mere passing gust of temper, we had better say good-bye at once. I have at least an equal right to bring the same charge against you, but I should disdain to harbour such a thought about you. There are many ways in which you may be cruel to a woman, Paul, and be forgiven, but you must not wound her pride in that way. That is the cruellest stab of all. The blade is poisoned, dear, and the wound will rankle for a lifetime.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, with his eyes blazing upon her, and the guarded voice in which he spoke shaking—‘tell me that you have really cared for me; tell me, on your conscience and your honour, that you have not deliberately led me to this madness.’
‘You can ask me that? she said. ‘You can insult me so?’
‘I ask it,’ he responded.
‘If my conduct has not shown it clearly,’ said Gertrude, ‘it is quite in vain to protest. I have given you better proof than words.’
‘There is only one proof,’ Paul answered. ‘Are you strong enough to brave the world with me?’