‘I had better leave you now, Madge,’ said Paul, half maddened by the sight of the uncomplaining grief he had awakened. ‘I will watch you home as soon as you care to go, but I won’t intrude upon you any longer.’
The slight figure rose from its seat upon the wrack, and stood before him with downcast and averted head, but he could still see the tears falling like diamond-drops in the clear moonlight. He turned irresolutely away, but he had made only a single step before he was vividly back again with an impulsive and imploring hand upon her shoulder.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘that you forgive me. Tell me that you will be able to think of me when I am gone with something—some feeling that will not be all contempt. You won’t always despise me, will you, Madge?’
‘I shall never despise you,’ she answered, in a voice she could barely control; ‘I shall always remember this time.’
‘And you don’t hate me for having spoken?’
She looked up at him with a strange smile, which was so tender and so full of pity that he caught his breath at the sight of it.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I shall never hate you. I must be as truthful as you have been. I must tell you that I had heard something of what you have told me before we left New Zealand. I didn’t know if it were true, and I did not even wish to ask.’
He stood still with that unconscious hand upon her shoulder, and his heart gave a leap as he asked:
‘You knew I loved you, Madge—you knew I loved you?’
‘I was quite sure of that,’ she answered ‘I have believed it for a long time.’