“Ah!”
He still stood looking down on her. “Don’t you want me to set that right?” he tentatively pursued.
She lifted her head and fixed him bravely. “It isn’t necessary,” she said.
Glennard flushed with the shock of the retort; then, with a gesture of comprehension, “No,” he said, “with you it couldn’t be; but I might still set myself right.”
She looked at him gently. “Don’t I,” she murmured, “do that?”
“In being yourself merely? Alas, the rehabilitation’s too complete! You make me seem—to myself even—what I’m not; what I can never be. I can’t, at times, defend myself from the delusion; but I can at least enlighten others.”
The flood was loosened, and kneeling by her he caught her hands. “Don’t you see that it’s become an obsession with me? That if I could strip myself down to the last lie—only there’d always be another one left under it!—and do penance naked in the market-place, I should at least have the relief of easing one anguish by another? Don’t you see that the worst of my torture is the impossibility of such amends?”
Her hands lay in his without returning pressure. “Ah, poor woman, poor woman,” he heard her sigh.
“Don’t pity her, pity me! What have I done to her or to you, after all? You’re both inaccessible! It was myself I sold.”
He took an abrupt turn away from her; then halted before her again. “How much longer,” he burst out, “do you suppose you can stand it? You’ve been magnificent, you’ve been inspired, but what’s the use? You can’t wipe out the ignominy of it. It’s miserable for you and it does her no good!”