"Can you?"
"No."
He rose to his feet from his knees easily, by one movement, and she watched him. Then there was a long silence and he began to walk up and down.
Helen felt as if she had done something disloyal, and that he had given the answer for which she had been longing intensely, as an escape from her decision, and as a means of freedom from bondage to come. She could ask herself now what right she had to expect that Archie should forgive his father. But, instead, she asked what right she could have had to give Archie so good a reason for hating him, when the boy had not suspected that which, after all, might not be the truth. She had made an enormous sacrifice in sending the message of forgiveness for her own wrongs, but it seemed to her, all at once, that in rousing Archie's resentment for his own injuries she had marred the purity of her own intention.
Indeed she was in no state to judge herself, for what Archie had told her was a goad in her wound, with a terror of new pain.
"You cannot forgive him," she said mechanically and almost to herself.
"Why should I?" asked Archie. "It means Sylvia to me. How can I forgive him that?"
And suddenly, without waiting for any answer, he went out and left her alone.
After a long time, she wrote this letter to her husband:
DEAR HENRY,--I am very glad to hear of your recovery, and I have received your letter to-day, together with the doctor's. I have telegraphed the one word for which you asked, and you have probably got the message already. But I must answer your letter as well as I can, and say a great many things which I shall never say again. If we are to meet and try to live together, it is better that I should speak plainly before I see you.