“No. Only I wonder you should take the trouble to tell me, when at the time—”
And now, with a sudden turn, he gave her the final surprise of meeting her squarely on her own ground.
“When at the time I didn’t? But how could I—at the time?”
“Why couldn’t you? You’ve not yet told me?”
He gave her again his look of disarming patience. “Do I need to? Hasn’t my whole wretched story told you?”
“Told me why you never answered my letters?”
“Yes, since I could only answer them in one way—by protesting my love and my longing.”
There was a long pause of resigned expectancy on his part, on hers, of a wild confused reconstruction of her shattered past. “You mean, then, that you didn’t write because—”
“Because I found, when I reached America, that I was a pauper; that my wife’s money was gone, and that what I could earn—I’ve so little gift that way!—was barely enough to keep Juliet clothed and educated. It was as if an iron door had been suddenly locked and barred between us.”
Lizzie felt herself driven back, panting upon the last defenses of her incredulity. “You might at least have told me—have explained. Do you think I shouldn’t have understood?”