“The best of me and the worst of me, the man in me and the beast in me, my sanity and my madness. All these you saw. The record is at least complete.”
“I hope so.”
“I could not lie to you nor cheat you with false sentiment. I played the game fairly until—until then.”
“Yes—until then.”
“You cared for me, there in the woods. I earned your friendship. And I hoped that the time had come when I could prove—to you, at least, that I was not to be found wanting.”
“And yet—you failed,” she said.
“Yes, I failed. Oh, I don’t try to make my sin any the less. I only want you to remember the circumstances—to acquit me of any intention to do you harm. I am no despoiler of women, even my enemies will tell you so. That, thank God, was not a part of my heritage. I have always looked on women of your sort with a kind of wonder. I have never understood them—nor they me. I thought of them as I thought of pictures or of children, things set apart from the grubby struggle for material and moral existence. I liked to be with them because their ways fell in pleasant places and because, in respecting them, I could better learn to respect myself. God knows, I respected you—honored you! Don’t say you don’t believe that!”
“I—I think you did——” she stammered.
“I tried to show you how much. You knew what was in my heart. I would have died for you—or lived for you, if you could have wished it so.”
He paused a moment, his brows tangled in thought.