"Mr. Gregory, you are certainly ill," she exclaimed. "I am so sorry it has all happened!"
He looked at her wonderingly, and then said, "You appear as if nothing had happened. I am ill, Miss Walton, and I wish I were dead. You can not feel toward me half the contempt I have for myself."
"Now, honestly, Mr. Gregory, I have no contempt for you at all."
He turned away and shook his head dejectedly.
"But I mean what I say," she continued, earnestly.
"Then it is your goodness, and not my desert."
"As I told you last night, so again I sincerely say, I think I understand you better than you do yourself."
"You are mistaken," he answered, with gloomy emphasis. "Your intuitions are quick, I admit. I have never known your equal in that respect. But there are some things I am glad to think you never can understand. You can never know what a proud man suffers when he has utterly lost hope and self-respect. Though I acted so mean a part myself, I can still appreciate your nobleness, courage, and fidelity to conscience. I thought such heroism belonged only to the past."
"Mr. Gregory, I wish I could make you understand me," said Annie, with real distress in her tone. "I am not brave; I was more afraid than you. Indeed, I was in an agony of fear. I refused that man's demand because I was compelled to. If you looked at things as I do, you would have done the same."
"Please say no more, Miss Walton," said he, his face distorted by an expression of intense self-loathing. "Do not try to palliate my course. I would much rather you would call my cowardly selfishness and lack of principle by their right names. The best thing I can do for the world is to get out of it, and from present feelings, this 'good-riddance' will soon occur. Will you excuse me if I sit down?" and he sank upon the door-step in utter weakness.