“Don’t, Katharine—please don’t,” said John, in an uncertain tone, and looking away from her again.
“But you must,” she cried in her low and pleading voice, leaning far forward, so that she spoke very close to his averted face. “It’s my life—it’s all I have! Jack—haven’t women done as bad things and been forgiven and been loved, too, after all was over? No—I know—oh, God! If I had but known before!”
“Don’t talk like that, Katharine!” said Ralston, distressed, if not moved. “What’s done is done, and we can’t undo it. I made a bad mistake myself—”
“You, Jack? What? Yesterday?” She thought he spoke of their marriage.
“No—the night before—at the Thirlwalls’, when I told you that I sometimes drank—and all that—”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Katharine. “You were so right. It was the bravest thing you ever did!”
“And this is the result,” said John, bitterly. “I put it all into your head then. You’d never thought about it before. And of course things looked badly—about yesterday—and you took it for granted. Isn’t that the truth?”
“No, dear. It’s not—you’re mistaken. Because I thought you brave, night before last, was no reason why I should have thought you a coward yesterday. No—don’t make excuses for me, even in that way. There are none—I want none—I ask for none. Only say that you’ll try to forgive me—but not as you said it just now. Mean it, Jack! Oh, try to mean it, if you ever loved me!”
Ralston had not doubted her sincerity for a moment, after he had caught sight of her face when he had finished telling his story at the dinner-table. She loved him with all her heart, and her grief for what she had done was real and deep. But he had been badly hurt. Love was half numb, and would not wake, though his tears were in her voice.
Nevertheless, she had moved John so far that he made an effort to meet her, as it were, and to stretch out his hand to hers across the gulf that divided them.