“How horror-stricken you would be, if I were to tell you why,” she said.
“Does that mean,” Georgie put it to her “that you were unkind to him?”
“It means,” was her strange reply—“it means that it was I who ruined his life forever.”
She made the confession fairly, in spite of herself. And she was emotional—vehement. She could not stand this innocent Georgie, and her beliefs any longer. She had been slowly approaching this mood for months, and now every inner and outer influence seemed to combine against her natural stubborn secretiveness. Perhaps Pen’yllan, the sea, the shore, the sky, helped her on to the end. At any rate, she must tell the truth this once, and hear what this innocent Georgie would say to it.
“I ruined his life for him,” she repeated. “I broke his faith. I believe I am to blame for every evil change the last few years have wrought in him. I, myself—Lisbeth. Do you hear, Georgie?”
The face under Georgie’s straw hat was rather pale, but it was not horror-stricken.
“You were too young,” she faltered, “to understand.”
“Too young?” echoed Lisbeth. “I never was young in my life. I was born old. I was born a woman, and I was born cold and hard. That was it. If I had been like other girls, he would have touched my heart, after he had touched my vanity, or he might even have touched my heart first. You would have loved him with all your soul. Are you willing to hear the whole history, Georgie?”
“Quite willing. Only,” and she raised her face with a bright, resolute, affectionate look, “you cannot make me think harshly of you. So, don’t try, Lisbeth.”
Lisbeth regarded her with an entirely new expression, which had, nevertheless, a shade of her old wonder in it.