His voice broke, rather than ceased, and lifting his gaze from her hands he looked straight into her wide-open eyes. The smile which she had turned to him a moment before was still on her lips, frozen there in the cold pallor of her face. Her eyes were the only things about her which seemed alive, and they appeared to him now not as eyes but as thoughts made visible. Bending her head quickly she kissed the hand which enclosed her own.
"I still believe," she said, and looked into his face.
"But it is true," he replied slowly.
"But it is not the whole truth," she answered, "and for that reason it is half a lie."
"Yes, it is not the whole truth," he repeated, in his effort to catch something of her bright courage.
"Why should they judge you by that and by nothing else?" she demanded with passion. "If that was true, is not your life in Tappahannock true also?"
"To you—to you," he answered, "but to-morrow everything will be forgotten about me except the fact that because I had been in prison, I have lived a lie."
"You are wrong—oh, believe me, you are wrong," she said softly, while her tears broke forth and streamed down her white face.
"No," he returned patiently, as if weighing her words in his thoughts, "I am right, and my life here is wasted now from the day I came. All that I do from this moment will be useless. I must go away."
"But where?" she questioned passionately, as Banks had questioned before her.