Is there something in the washing of tears that gives insight to sympathetic eyes? She saw deep into him at that moment; saw that to deny her accusation would be to lie; saw also that he could not look into her eyes and find words to frame the falsehood. So she was prepared for the evasion.
“And if that were true, what then?”
“You would be making a terrible and utterly useless mistake. Don’t you know—haven’t they told you? It has been proved that my brother could not have done it.”
He did not ask how it had been proved. It was enough that she believed it, and it was the final drop of bitterness in the cup of expiation that he had thought to drain bravely to the dregs. To her, as to all others, save only Antrim, he was a murderer. It was more than he could bear unmoved, and he turned from her lest she should see the anguish in his face and be moved by it to say the thing which was not true. When he did not reply she spoke again:
“That was the reason, wasn’t it?”
“It was—it is.” The words said themselves because there was no strength left in him wherewith to hold them back.
She gave him no time to draw again the sheathed sword of denial. “I was sure of it. But you won’t hesitate any longer now, will you?—not after what I have told you.”
“Hesitate—to tell them I am guilty? No, I shall not hesitate; I’ll confess to you—here—now, if you wish.” He faced her suddenly, but again the tear-brightened eyes and their pleading unmanned him. “No, I can’t say it to you,” he went on, softening and becoming as the clay on the potter’s wheel in spite of himself. “In the eye of the law—in the eyes of the whole world—I am a murderer, taken in the very act. But I can not go to my death with the thought that the only woman I have ever loved believes me guilty of such a cowardly crime. I did not kill James Harding.”
Dorothy forgot her errand, forgot the papers, forgot everything in the horror of a great doubt and the ecstasy of an unchartered joy still greater than the doubt which suddenly threatened to suffocate her. Nevertheless, a misunderstanding, rooted and grounded as hers was, dies hard.
“You mean that I should—that you want me to—to tell my sister,” she faltered; and she could no longer look him in the face.