"I have tried hard to make myself ever so little worthy of you," she murmured, when her voice would again obey her will. "Am I still—still too far beneath you?"
He stood like one detected in a crime, and stammered the words.
"Ida, I am not free."
He had risen. Ida sprang up, and moved towards him.
"This was your secret? Tell me, then. Look—I am strong! Tell me about it. I might have thought of this. I thought only of myself. I might have known there was good reason for the distance you put between us. Forgive me—oh, forgive the pain I have caused you!"
"You asking for forgiveness? How you must despise me."
"Why should I despise you? You have never said a word to me that any friend, any near friend, might not have said, never since I myself, in my folly, forbade you to. You were not bound to tell me—"
"I had told your grandfather," Waymark said in a broken voice. "In a letter I wrote the very day he was taken ill, I begged him to let you know that I had bound myself."
As he spoke he knew that he was excusing himself with a truth which implied a falsehood, and before it was too late his soul revolted against the unworthiness.
"But it was my own fault that it was left so long. I would not let him tell you when he wished to; I put off the day as long as I could."