“And I have changed more,” he answered gravely. “Katharine, look at me.”
She looked as he bade, almost timidly, at the thin earnest face beside her.
“You know—you must know why it is I have come here to you to-day,” he said, his voice vibrating strangely. “Katharine! I have no right to ask or expect that you can care for me still. And I am not here to offer you my love; I gave it to you nine long years ago, and you have had it ever since. I have come to make you a confession.”
He told the story of his selfishness and folly—hiding nothing. She listened silently, her head bent, her hands clasped on her knee.
“I have no right to offer you what’s left from the wreck I’ve made of my life,” he concluded, “but my love is yours—as it always has been since that first spring afternoon I saw you, as it always must be through life and beyond it.”
He rose slowly from his chair, leaning upon his stick.
“Thank you for listening to me, dear. Good-bye.”
She came swiftly towards him, and laid her two hands upon his arm.
“You have no faith,” she said, “though perhaps I hardly deserve that you should believe in my love after that cruel letter that I wrote five years ago. St. Quentin, don’t you know that I have cared always?—that I cared even when I told you that I never wished to see or hear of you again? It is not possible to give up caring, and, dear, I care more, far more now, than ever I cared in that bright spring time long ago. Dear, don’t you understand?”
And St. Quentin did.