And without further preface she told him all. How she had let Gerald Chandos flatter and gain power over her, until the climax of her folly had been the wild, wilful escapade of that miserable long-past day. How Ralph Gowan had discovered her romantic secret, and revealed it to Dolly. How they had followed and rescued her; even how Dolly had awakened her from her dangerous dream with that light touch, and had drawn her away from the brink of an abyss, with her loving, girlish hands; and she ended with an outburst of anguish.
“Why did n't she tell you?” she said. “For my sake she did not want the rest to know; but why did not she tell you? I cannot understand.”
“She tried to tell me,” he said, in an agony of self-reproach, as he began to see what he had done,—"she tried to tell me, and I would not hear her.”
All his bygone sufferings—and, Heaven knows, he had suffered bitterly and heavily enough—sank into insignificance before the misery of this hour. To know how true and pure of heart she had been; to know how faithful, unselfish, sweet; to remember how she had met him with a tender little cry of joy, with outstretched, innocent hands, that he had thrust aside; to remember the old golden days in which she had so clung to him, and brightened his life; to think how he had left her lying upon the sofa that night, her white face drooping piteously against the cushions; to have all come back to him and know that he only was to blame; to know it all too late. Nay, a whole life of future bliss could never quite efface the memory of such a passion of remorse and pain.
“Oh, my God!” he prayed, “have mercy upon me!” And then he turned upon Mollie. “Tell me where to go to; tell me, and let me go. I must go to her now without a moment's waiting. My poor, faithful little girl,—my pretty Dolly! Dying,—dying! No, I don't believe it,—I won't. She cannot die yet. Fate has been cruel enough to us, but it cannot be so cruel as that. Love will make her live.”
He dashed down Mollie's directions in desperate, feverish haste upon a leaf of his memorandum-book, and then he bade her good-by.
“God bless you, dear!” he said. “Perhaps you have saved us both. I am going to her now. Pray for me.”
“I ought rather to pray for myself,” she said; “but for me you would never have been separated. I have done it all.”
And a few minutes after he had gone, Ralph Gowan, who had awaited her return before the window, turned to see her enter the room like a spirit and fling herself down before him, looking white and shaken and pale.
“I have found it all out now,” she cried. “I have found it all out. I have done all this, Mr. Gowan; it is through me her heart is broken, and if she dies, I shall have caused her death, as surely as if I had killed her with my own hand. Oh, save me from thinking she will die,—help me to think she will live,—help me!”