“I do understand you, I think, but what you propose does not look possible to me. There has been that between us which makes it very hard to try such experiments. Do you not think so?”
“It may seem hard, but it is not impossible, if you will only try to think more kindly of me. Do you know what my mistake was—where I was most wrong? It was in not telling you—what I did—a year sooner. Let us be honest. Break through this veil there is between us, if it is only for to-day. What is formality to you or me? You loved me once—I could not love you. Is that a reason why you should treat me like a stranger when we meet, or why I should pick and choose my words with you, as though I feared you instead of—of being very fond of you? Think it all over, even if it pains you a little. You would have done anything for my sake once. If I had told you a year earlier—as I ought to have told you—that I could never love you enough to marry you, would you then have been so angry and have gone away from me as you did?”
“No. I would not,” said George. “But there was that difference——”
“Wait. Let me finish what I was going to say. It was not what I did, it was that I did it far too late. You would not have given up coming to see me, if it had all happened a year earlier. My fault lay in putting it off too long. It was very wrong. I have been very sorry for it. There is nothing I would not do for you—I am just what I always was in my feelings towards you—and more. Can I humiliate myself more than I have done before you? I do not think there are many women who would have done what I have done, what I am doing now. Can I be more humble still? Shall I confess it all again?”
“You have done all that a woman could or should,” George said, and there was no bitterness in his voice. It seemed to him that the old Constance he had loved was slowly entering into the person of the young girl before him, whom he had of late treated as a stranger and who had been so really and truly one in his sight.
“And yet, will you not forgive?” she asked in a low and supplicating tone.
He gazed at the river and did not speak. He was not conscious that she was watching his face intently. She saw no bitterness nor hardness there, however, but only an expression of perplexity. The word forgiveness did not convey to him half what it meant to her. She attached a meaning to it, which escaped him. She was morbid and had taken an unreal view of all that had happened between them. His mind was strong, natural and healthy, and he could not easily understand why she should lend such importance to what he now considered a mere phrase, no matter how he had regarded it in the heat and anger of his memorable interview with her.
“Miss Fearing—” he began. He hardly knew why he called her by name, unless it was that he was about to make a categorical statement. So soon as the syllables had escaped his lips, however, he repented of having pronounced them. He saw a shade of pain pass over her face, and at the same time it seemed a childish way of indicating the distance by which they were now separated. It reminded him of George the Third’s “Mr. Washington.”
“Constance,” he said after another moment’s hesitation, “we do not speak in the same language. You ask me for my forgiveness. What am I to forgive? If there is anything to be forgiven, I forgive most freely. I was very angry, and therefore very foolish on that day when I said I would not forgive you. I am not angry now. What I feel is very different. I bear you no malice, I wish you no evil.”
Constance was silent and looked away. She did not understand him, though she felt that he was not speaking unkindly. What he offered her was not what she wanted.