Her tone seemed icy, though her soul was in her eyes. She was all upon the defense, as Lewis instantly understood. He took her hand in both of his own, and looked into her face.
She gazed up at him, and swiftly, mercifully, the tears came. Gently, as if she had been a child, he dried them for her—as once when a boy, he had promised to do. They were alone now. The cold silence of the prison was about them; but their own long silence seemed a golden, glowing thing. Thus only—in their silence—could they speak. They did not know that they stood hand in hand.
“My husband is not here,” said she at length, gently disengaging her hand from his. “No one knows me now, every one avoids me. You must not be seen with me—a pariah, an outcast! I am my father’s only friend. Already they condemn him; yet he is as innocent as any man ever was.”
“I shall say no word to change that belief,” said Meriwether Lewis. “But your husband is not here? It is he whom I must see at once.”
“Why must you see him?”
“You must know! It is my duty to go to him and to tell him that I am the man who—who made you weep. He must have his satisfaction. Nothing that he can do will punish me as my own conscience has already punished me. It is no use—I shall not ask you to forgive me—I will not be so cheap.”
“But—suppose he does not know?”
He could only stand silent, regarding her fixedly.
“He must never know!” she went on. “It is no time for quixotism to make yet another suffer. We two must be strong enough to carry our own secret. It is better and kinder that it should be between two than among three. I thought you dead. Let the past remain past—let it bury its own dead!”
“It is our time of reckoning,” said he, at length. “Guilty as I have been, sinning as I have sinned—tell me, was I alone in the wrong? Listen. Those who joined your father’s cause were asked to join in treason to their country. What he purposed was treason. Tell me, did you know this when you came to me?”