"Reckon you're the last person that deserves punishing," he said at length, and in his voice she fancied she caught an echo of the old frank kindliness. "You've been the victim all through. Reckon you've suffered more than enough already."
She hid her face from him with a sudden rush of tears. Something in his words pierced straight to her heart.
"You don't know me!" she sobbed. "Oh, you don't know me!"
She drew herself away and sank down in the chair by the fire where once she had poured out all her troubles to him.
He did not kneel beside her now. He stood in silence, and as he stood his hands slowly clenched and he thrust them into his pockets.
He spoke at last, but it was with a restraint that made the words sound cold. "Maybe I know you better than you think. I know you've cared for the wrong man ever since I first met you. Guess I've known it all along, and it hasn't made things extra easy for either of us, more especially as he was utterly unworthy of you. But you're not to blame for that. It's just human nature. And you'd never have fallen in love with me anyway." He paused a moment. "I don't see you're to blame any for that either," he said, and she knew by his voice that he had turned away from her. "Anyway, I'm not blaming you. And if--if punishing Saltash means punishing you too--well,--even though he's a skunk and a blackguard--I reckon--I'll let him go."
He was moving to the door with the words. They came half-strangled as if something within rebelled fiercely against their utterance.
He reached the door and stopped with his back to her.
"You'd better get your mother to join you here to-morrow," he said. "I'm sleeping with The Hundredth Chance to-night. He's been below par lately, and I'm kind of worried about him."
He opened the door. He was on the point of squarely passing through when quickly, tremulously, she stopped him.