"It went on so for five years," he slowly finished, "and it was from beginning to end deliberate, devilish revenge. I meant from the first to make him what he is to-day. I meant to make him hate his grandfather as he does—I meant to make him the hopeless drunkard that he is. It is all my work—every bit of it—as you see it now."
He paused, but her eyes clung to the withered fern, and so quiet was her figure that it seemed as if she had not drawn breath since he began. Her faint smile was still sketched about the corners of her mouth, and her fingers were closed upon the brim of his harvest hat.
"For five years I was like that," he went on again. "I did not know, I did not care—I wanted to be a beast. Then you came and it was different."
For the first time she turned and looked at him.
"And it was different?" she repeated beneath her breath.
"Oh, there's nothing to say that will make things better; I know that. If you had not come I should never have known myself nor what I had been. It was like a thunderclap—the whole thing; it shook me off my feet before I saw what it meant—before I would acknowledge even to myself that—"
"That?" she questioned in a whisper, for he had bitten back the words.
"That I love you."
As he spoke she slipped suddenly to her knees and lay with her face hidden on the old log, while her smothered sobs ran in long shudders through her body. A murmur reached him presently, and it seemed to him that she was praying softly in her clasped hands; but when in a new horror of himself he made a movement to rise and slip away, she looked up and gently touched him detainingly on the arm.
"Oh, how unhappy—how unhappy you have been!" she said.