Honor drew his face closer and laid her cheek to his.
"I hated everybody—I even tried to hate you, but it was impossible. I resented the happiness of other men. I tried my best to break up a man's home after partaking of his hospitality. Do you care to kiss me now?"
Honor kissed him tenderly. "I watched it all with such suffering!"
"You did? God forgive me! Did you know that it is not to my credit that Mrs. Meredith is an honest woman today?"
"I know all about it."
"She told you? I might have known it! Women like Joyce Meredith talk. But she is a good little woman. As for me!—I am unfit to kiss your boot. Even now, I am the greatest blackguard unhung,—the meanest coward, for I cannot bring myself to renounce my heart's desire!" He held her from him and looked into her face with haggard eyes. "Send me away! Say you will have nothing to do with me!—I shall then trouble you no more."
With a happy laugh Honor flung herself on his breast. "Send you away?—now?" The thing was clearly impossible. And why should she? However wickedly he had behaved in the past it mattered nothing to her, for the present was hers and all the future. What a glorious prospect!
"You haven't the foggiest idea what a scoundrel I am!"
"Then I must have a special leaning towards scoundrels!" she replied, her face hidden on his shoulder.
"God knows the biggest thing in my life is my love for you," he said brokenly. "My dream-girl! If I lose you, I lose everything. You will not fail me, Honey?" he asked solemnly. "If all the world should wish to part us, you will still hold to me?"