"Come!" he said. "You can tell me now."
"I—don't know," whispered Betty, her face hidden. "You—frightened me by being so ready to go away again. I couldn't help wondering if it had been just kindness that prompted you to come to me. It—I suppose it wasn't?" A startled note of interrogation sounded in her voice. She was trembling still.
"Betty, Betty!" he said.
"Forgive me!" she whispered back, "You see, I couldn't have endured that, because I—love you. No, wait; I haven't finished. I want you to know the truth. I've been sacrificing substance to shadow, reality to dreams, all my life—all my life. But that night—the night I took you into my confidence—you opened my eyes. I began to see what I was doing. But I hadn't the courage to tell you so, and it seemed not quite fair to Bobby so I held my peace.
"I let you go. But I knew—I knew before you went—that even if you found him, even if you brought him back, even if he cared for me still, I should have nothing to give him. My feeling for him was just a dream from which I had awakened. Oh, Monty, I was yours even then; and I kept it back. That was why I wanted your forgiveness."
Breathlessly she ended, and in silence he heard her out. He was holding her very closely to him, but his eyes looked beyond her, as though they searched a far horizon.
"Do you understand?" whispered Betty at last.
He moved, and the look in his eyes changed. It was as if the horizon narrowed.
"I understand," he said.
She lifted her face, with a gesture half shy, half confiding.