"No," she answered, still holding to the bars, for she somehow felt quite unaccountably weak. "It wasn't very bad. There's hardly any scar at all—or won't be, when it's fully healed. But all this is trifling, compared to what you've suffered and are suffering. Oh, what a horrible affair! What frightful accusations! Tell me the truth, Boy—how, why could—?"
He looked at her a moment, in silence, noting her splendid hair and eyes and mouth, the firm, well-moulded chin, the confident and self-reliant poise of the shapely head; and as he looked, he knew he loved this woman. He understood, at last, how dear she was to him—dearer than anything else in all the world save just his principles and stern life work. He comprehended the meaning of all, his dreams and visions and long thoughts. And, caring nothing for consequences, unskilled in the finesse of dealing with women, acting wholly on the irresistible impulses of a heart that overflowed, he looked deep into those gray eyes and said in a tone that set her heart-strings vibrating:
"Listen! The truth? How could I tell you anything else? I know not who you are, and care not. That you are rich and powerful and free, while I am poor and in captivity, means nothing. Love cares not for such trifles. It dares all, hopes all, trusts all, believes all—and is patient in adversity."
"Love?" she whispered, her face paling. "How do you dare to—?"
"Dare? Because my heart bids me. And where it bids, I care not for conventions or consequences!" He flung his hand out with a splendid gesture, his head high, his eyes lustrous in the half-light of the cell. "Where it leads, I have to follow. That is why I am a Socialist! That is why I am here, today, outcast and execrated, a prisoner, in danger of long years of living death in the pestilential tomb of some foul penitentiary!"
"You're here because—because you are a Socialist?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Yes," said he. "I tried to help a suffering, outcast woman—or one who posed as such. And she betrayed me to my enemies. And so—"
"There was a woman in this affair, then?" Catherine queried with sudden pain. "The newspapers haven't made the story all up out of whole cloth?"
"No. There was a woman. A Delilah, who delivered me into the hands of the Philistines, when I tried to help her in what she lied in telling me was her need. Will you hear the story?"