"Because ... because ... did n't you get the letters? I left them on the piano."
"Oh, yes; the letters. I read them. But I did n't ... know them." "Know them" was n't what he wanted to say, and he struggled for a moment to find the requisite expression, but his mills were not equal to it. "I did n't ... know them," he repeated vaguely.
"Oh ... because ... because..."
And thereupon the girl plunged into the shameful deeps of her wickedness, and made confession. A hurried confession it was, for time pressed, but she cried it in its entirety into his ear—shielding nothing but the absent man ... and her love.
And the mills of the Spawer's mind thumped faster.
"I want ... to ask you something," he said slowly, "... before I die."
"Yes ... yes." The girl was at his lips in a moment, to catch their precious outpouring before death should stop her hearing for ever. "Ask me. I am here."
"I want to ask you..." he said. "You know why I was going back. The other letter was ... from Her. She asks me to set her free. If there had n't been ... been any other one in the case, and I 'd asked you ... to marry me ... would you have married me?"
And in an instant the girl's arms were about the man's neck, and her lips upon his lips, as though they would have sucked the poor remaining life out of his body into her own, and given it an abiding habitation.
"Oh ... my love, my love!" the girl wept, through the wet lips that clung to him. "What do I care about dying now? I would rather a thousand times die to learn that you had loved me ... than live and never know it."