He paused for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. Then he told her his life-story, omitting nothing, concealing nothing, palliating nothing. That done, he went on:—
“You understand now why I was driven to the course I have adopted with you. You understand that as an honourable man I could not ask you for love, leaving you in ignorance of the fact that I am under a conviction of felony. My sentence is at an end, of course, and I cannot be rearrested, inasmuch as I am officially adjudged to be dead. But that makes no difference in my duty. I could not honourably reveal my love to you until you should know the facts. I do not now ask you to accept my wrecked life and to forget the facts that have wrecked it. I have no right to ask so great a sacrifice at your hands. I ask only that you shall permit me to regard you as the woman I love, the woman I should have sought to make my wife if I had been worthy. I ask your permission so to arrange my affairs, or so to leave them as already arranged, that at my death all that I have will pass into your hands. You can never know or dream or imagine how I love you, Evelyn. Surely it is only a little thing that I ask of you.”
As he delivered this passionate utterance, Kilgariff threw his arm around the girl’s waist, and for a moment held her closely. She let her head rest upon his shoulder, and did not resist or resent his impulse when he kissed her reverently upon the forehead.
But an instant later, she suddenly realised the situation, and quickly sprang to her feet, he rising with her and facing her with strained nerves and eyes fixed upon her own, sternly but caressingly.
Evelyn Byrd was not given to tears, and for that reason the drops that now trickled down her cheeks had far more meaning to Kilgariff than a woman’s tears sometimes have for a man.
For a time, she looked him full in the face, not attempting to conceal her tears even by brushing them away. She simply let them flow, as an honest expression of her emotion.
Finally she so far composed herself as to speak.
“Owen Kilgariff,” she said—it was the first time she had ever so addressed him—“Owen Kilgariff, you have dealt honestly with me; I want to deal honestly with you. If I were worthy of your love, I should rejoice in it. As it is, this is the greatest calamity of my life. You do not know—but you shall. There are reasons that forbid me to accept the love you have offered—peremptory reasons. You shall know them quickly.”
With that she glided out of the room, and Owen Kilgariff was left alone.