But Jacqueline had dedicated herself to honesty that day. "It wasn't just pity, Mummy. I——I wanted him, too! I wanted him as much as he wanted me—more, I think, because after all he never came for me. Just went away without a word." Suddenly she hid her face in her hands. "Oh, Mummy, and I loved him so! I adored him!—I loved him as much as you loved Phil's father."
Kate opened her lips in quick protest, but did not speak. How could she explain the difference between this childish infatuation for a first lover and her own devotion to such a man as Jacques Benoix? Was there, after all, such a difference? It is not the recipient but the giver that makes love a holy thing.
She knelt beside the girl, and put both arms around her. "My dear!—Did it hurt very much when he did not come?"
Jacqueline leaned her head on the warm shoulder that had received so many of her griefs, and gave way freely to the relief of weeping.
"Oh, yes, it hurt," she said between sobs. "It still hurts."
"You don't mean that you still—care for him?"
The other raised tear-filled eyes in surprise. "Now that I am married to Philip? Why, of course not! How could I? My husband is the dearest thing in the world!"
Kate laughed in sheer relief.
But the girl's lips were still quivering, and she ducked her head down on the comfortable shoulder again. "I can't help feeling ashamed, though," she sobbed. "Ashamed be-because Mr. Channing proved to be such—such a coward, and because—he never could have loved me at all, or he would have come for me, or written, or something!—He must have been glad to get away from me, just as he was from that other woman."
"Listen, darling!" Kate realized that her own moment of confession had arrived. "He did come for you! It is my fault that he has never explained to you;"—and with the girl's widening, incredulous eyes fixed upon her, she told every detail of her experience that night of the storm.