He stopped rowing.
"There is no stain," he said. "Don't call it one."
"It must be one," she said, "when one sees evil, and is suspicious, and on the alert to discover wrong. But it brings suffering, as if it were a punishment. I have suffered."
He paused a second and answered, looking backward over his shoulder.
"So did I—for a moment," he said. "But it is over now. Don't think of me."
"I must think of you," she said. "How could I help it?"
She turned a little more toward him and leaned forward, the most exquisite appeal in her delicate face, the most exquisite pathos in her unsteady voice.
"If I ask you to forgive me," she said, "you will only say that I was forgiven before I asked. I know that. I wish I could say something else. I wish—I wish I knew what to do."
He looked up the river and down, and then suddenly at her. The set, miserable expression of his face startled her, and caused her to make an involuntary movement.