"Will you not even look at me?" he says, presently in a change, almost agonized, tone.
I force my eyes to meet his, but drop them again almost immediately.
"Is forgiveness quite out of the question?"
"No," I return; "of course I forgive you. It was not your fault. There is nothing to forgive. But in the first instance you deceive me; that I feel the hardest. Even to myself my voice sounds cold and strange.
"I acknowledge it. But how was I to tell this would be the end of it? It appeared impossible you should ever know the truth. It was only known to myself and one other.—-"
"And that was—-"
"Mark Gore. The woman, as I believed, was dead, and who could betray the secret? The whole miserable story was so hateful to me that to repeat it to you—whom I so devotedly loved—was more than I had courage for. How could I tell you such a sickening tale! How could I watch the changes—the dislike, it might be—that would cloud your face as I related it? By your own confession, I knew you bore me none of that love that would have helped me safely through even a worse revelation, and I dreaded lest the bare liking you entertained for me should have an end, and that you, a young girl, would shrink from a widower, and the hero of such a story."
"Still, it would have been better if you had spoken; I can forgive anything but deceit."
"Once or twice I tried to tell you the only secret I had from you, but you would not listen, or else at the moment spoke such words as made me doubt the expediency of ever mentioning the affair at all. But now that it is too late, I regret my duplicity, or cowardice, or whatever it was that swayed me."
"Too late, indeed!" I repeat almost mechanically.