“Yes—I know that,” she answered. “But, Jack dear—yes, it was brave and honest of you—but you don’t think I expected a confession, do you? I daresay you have done many things that weren’t exactly wrong and that were not at all dishonourable, but which you shouldn’t like to tell me. Haven’t you?”
“Of course I have. Every man has, by the time he’s five and twenty—lots of things.”
“Well—but now, Jack—now, when we are married, you won’t do such things—whatever they may be—any more—will you?”
“That’s it—I don’t know,” answered Ralston, determined to be honest to the very end, with all his might, in spite of everything.
“You don’t know?” As Katharine repeated the words her face changed in a way that shocked him, and he almost started as he saw her expression.
“No,” he answered, steadily enough. “I don’t—in regard to what I spoke of. For other things, for anything else in the world that you ask me, I can promise, and feel sure. But that one thing—it comes on me sometimes, and it gets the better of me. I know—it’s weak—it’s contemptible, it’s brutal, if you like. But I can’t help it, every time. Of course you can’t understand. Nobody can, who hasn’t felt it.”
“But, Jack—if you promised me that you wouldn’t?”
Her face changed again, and softened, and her voice expressed the absolute conviction that he would and could do anything which he had given his word that he would do. That perfect belief is more flattering than almost anything else to some men.
“Katharine—I can’t!” Ralston shook his head. “I won’t give you a promise which I might break. If I broke it, I should—you wouldn’t see me any more after that. I’ll promise that I’ll try, and perhaps I shall succeed. I can’t do more—indeed, I can’t.”
“Not for me, Jack dear?” Her whole heart was in her voice, pleading, pathetic, maidenly.