I grinned. “One of them I may call my friend: the other—well, there are those who will tell you that the other has always been Dick Page’s own dearest enemy.”
Her keen wit pounced instantly upon the truth before I could bite my tongue for its foolish rashness.
“Yourself? Oh, Dick! what is this wretched web you have become entangled in? Tell me—tell me!”
“I can not,” I said, realizing too late that I had brought all this upon myself.
“You mean you will not: then you do not love me, Dick Page!”
“Perhaps it is because I love you too well, sweetheart. Can’t you believe that?”
“No, I can not. Where there is love, there is confidence and trust. You don’t trust me!”
“I do trust you. But this you are asking me to tell you is not my own secret and, besides, it would only add to your burdens without lightening mine; indeed, it would make mine immeasurably heavier—too heavy to be borne, I fear.”
She sat down and began to look into the heart of the crackling fire on the hearth, as she had done that other night.
“How little you know of women, Dick,” she said musingly. “You ask my love, and yet you deny that love its first privilege—the right to share your dangers and perplexities. More, you would even lie to it—by implication. But you have not succeeded wholly in doing that. Some things I have found out for myself, and one of them is—that you are not the traitor you seem to be, Richard.”