He bit his lip to keep back the cry of fear that almost escaped him. He knew what was coming, and dreaded it like the cutting of a flashing knife.
"Go on!"
"Cuthbert, if you ever went back to your old world and saw women, as I say, cleverer and more beautiful than I am, you might wish you had never seen me. You would not tell me so, and you would not, if you could help it, let me guess it, but my woman's instinct would warn me—and then what should I do? I should be chained to you, and you would be chained to me. I should be a drag upon you—a curse—instead of the help I wish to be. I should love you just the same, because I could never love anyone else; but think what the depth of my despair would be!"
A large tear fell on the back of his hand. He drew her to him with almost a fierceness.
"I told you the other day I should never go back to my old world. I am dead to it, and it is dead to me. I am Cuthbert Ellison, the pearler, your husband, and I wish to be no other. Forget, for mercy's sake, that I ever had a past; let us live only for my present and the future. Let me be to you the husband I would wish to be; let me work, toil, knowing no weariness in what is done for you; let me build up a new life of honour for your sake, and let the dead past bury its dead. I love you, and I want no world that has not you in it. Let us never speak on this subject again."
"You are not angry with me for saying what I did."
"Angry, no! I am sorry, full of remorse that I ever told you that story. God must help me to atone for it. I shall never be able to rid myself of the fear that you will hate me for it."
"You are unjust to yourself, and even, I think, a little unjust to me. Had you not told me, there would always have been a barrier between us. Now I know everything, and, believe me, I do not honour you the less for telling me."
She raised his hand to her mouth and imprinted a kiss upon it. That kiss stung him to the quick. Like the look of trust upon her face when he had helped her from the boat, it was almost a reproach. It was the beginning of his punishment. He made shift to change the course of the conversation.
"Darling," he said, "have you thought seriously yet of what our marriage means to us? Have you thought what you have made of the man who only a month ago stood before you in this very veranda, in rags and tatters, asking for employment to keep body and soul together? That man is now your husband. Linked to you not for to-day or to-morrow, next week or next month, but for all time, for all eternity. Your husband—part of your own self: surely that should be sufficient passport for me into heaven itself. My interests are to be your interests, your hopes my hopes—in fact, your life is mine, and my life yours. There is an awful solemnity about it. If I could only grasp the drift of it all!"