"I think—nay, I may say I know that she thinks well of you, Dick," I blundered on, seeing no way to put him off.
He gripped my hand, and in his eyes there was the light of the old love reawakening.
"Don't lift me up to fling me down again, Jack! How can you know what she thinks of me?" he broke in, eagerly.
I should have told him then all there was to tell. He had been thrice my savior, and his heart was soft and malleable on the side of friendship. I knew it—knew that the pregnant moment for full confession had arrived; and yet I could not force my tongue to shape the words. Indeed, I saw more clearly than before that never any word of mine could make him understand that I was not a faithless traitor in intention. So I paltered with the truth, like any wretched coward of them all.
"You forget that I have come to know her well," I said. "I was a month or more under the same roof with her, and in that time she told me many things."
Now, this witless speech was no better than a whip to flog him on.
"What things?" he questioned, promptly.
"Oh, many things. She spoke often of you."
"What did she say of me, Jack? Tell me what she said," he begged. "It can make no difference now; she is less than nothing to me—nay,'tis even worse than that, since she would play Delilah if she could. But oh, Jack, I love her!—I should love her if I stood on the gallows and she stood by to spring the drop and turn me off!"
Truly, if the lash of remorse had lacked its keenest thong, this passionate outburst of his would have added it. None the less, I must needs be weaker than water and fall back another step and put him off.