She looked up after a moment. There was a bleak expression in her eyes.
"Will you believe me if I say to you that I went into it blindly?"
"God bless my soul, I am sure of it," I cried earnestly. "You had never been in love. You did not know."
"I have told you that I believed myself to be in love with Maris. Doesn't—doesn't that help matters a little bit?"
I looked away. The hurt, appealing look was in her eyes. It had come at last, and, upon my soul, I was as little prepared to repel it as when I entered the room hours ago after having lived in fear of it for hours before that. I looked away because I knew that I should do something rash if I were to lose my head for an instant.
She was like an unhappy pleading child. I solemnly affirm that it was tender-heartedness that moved me in this crucial instant. What man could have felt otherwise?
I assumed a coldly impersonal tone. "Not a single editorial in any of these papers holds you responsible for what happened in New York," I said.
She began to collect the scattered newspaper clippings and the type-written transcriptions. I gathered up those in the corner and laid them in her lap. Her fingers trembled a little.
"Throw them in the fireplace, please," she said in a low voice. "I kept them only for the purpose of showing them to you. Oh, how I hate, how I loathe it all!"
When I came back from the fireplace, she was lying back in the big, comfortable chair, a careless, whimsical smile on her lips. She was as serene as if she had never known what it was to have a heart-pang or an instant of regret in all her life. I could not understand that side of her.