“I don’t know how it is myself, but he does, and Luther never lies. You can see that he’s square with her. He gives her a kind of companionship that will keep her out of the position I’m in, too,” she said with conviction, and then saw the kind of blow that she had dealt, and covered her face with her hands for shame.
Elizabeth heard the invalid sigh deeply. When she could speak again, she slid down on her knees by his bed and, laying her arm across the shoulders of the man she had hurt, faced herself and her deeds squarely, as was her way.
“It’s of no use, Hugh. We’ve got to face it. I didn’t intend to hurt you, but I’m in a serious position. I must think of this thing all my life—and I shall shrink whenever I do. I shall see everybody in the light of my own life. I made no comparison between you and Luther. There’s love and love in this world, as I’ve found out. John thought he loved me and I thought I loved him—and look at us! I don’t know what Luther would do if he were placed where we are, but that is not the question. I hurt you just now; but, oh, Hugh! I love you too—God help me, and in the midst of it all I want my self-respect back till I could almost die to get it. Sometimes I think I’ll go and tell John yet.”
When for sheer want of breath Elizabeth stopped and looked at Hugh Noland inquiringly, he asked eagerly:
“Could we?”
And for a long time she looked at him, till her eyes took on a faraway look which said that she was going over details and experiences of the past. In the light of those experiences she finally shook her head.
“No,” she said with simple conviction. “You don’t know John. He’d never understand that—— Well, he’d mix everything uselessly. It would fall hardest on Jack; his future would be spoiled by the humiliation of having everybody think I was worse than I——”
Elizabeth could not finish her sentence for the pain on the face before her, and hid her face on the same pillow and cried out her grief and heartache till Hugh had to warn her that Hepsie might come in.
It was well that Elizabeth’s mind was occupied with Hepsie while she bathed and cooled her swollen eyelids. Long afterward she remembered Hugh had laid his arm across his white face at that moment, but she was never to know the fulness of the self-reproach nor the depths of the despair which Hugh Noland suffered—Hugh, who loved her. For himself, he did not so much care, being a man and accustomed to the life of men in those things, but he saw the endless round of her days, carrying with her through them all the secrecy and shame of it; she who loved openness! If she had been a woman who looked herself less squarely in the face it would have been less hard.
“I think I’ll talk to Luther too,” he said at last. “You couldn’t drive Patsie over for him this evening, could you?” he asked.