“How do you mean?” I cried.
“If he requires atonement, he must have it, even at the hands of the law.”
Then, for the first time, it struck me that, though Max was safe so long as he made no confession, for the peculiar circumstances of Harry's death left no other evidence against him, still, this confession once public (and it was, for had I not told Penelope?) his reputation, liberty, life itself, were in the hands of my sister and my father. A horror as of death fell upon me. I clung to him who was my all in this world, dearer to me than father, mother, brother, or sister; and I urged that we should both, then and there, fly—escape together anywhere, to the very ends of the earth, out of reach of justice and my father.
I must have been almost beside myself before I thought of such a thing. I hardly knew all it implied, until Max gravely put me from him.
“It cannot be you who says this. Not Theodora.”
And suddenly, as unconnected and even incongruous things will flash across one in times like these, I called to mind the scene in my favourite play, when, the alternative being life or honour, the woman says to her lover, “No, die!” Little I dreamed of ever having to say to my Max almost the same words.
I said them, kneeling by him, and imploring his pardon for having wished him to do such a thing even for his safety and my happiness.
“We could not have been happy, child,” he said, smoothing my hair, with a sad, fond smile. “You do not know what it is to have a secret weighing like lead upon your soul. Mine feels lighter now than it has done for years. Let us decide: what hour to-night shall I come here and tell your father?” Saying this, Max turned white to the very lips, but still he comforted me.
“Do not be afraid, my child. I am not afraid. Nothing can be worse than what has been—to me. I was a coward once, but then I was only a boy, hardly able to distinguish right from wrong. Now I see that it would have been better to have told the whole truth at once, and taken all the punishment. It might not have been death, or if it were, I could but have died.”
“Max, Max!”