As she turned, she saw something in his face—a pity and an agony of self-accusation—that made her weak and white. She sank into a chair, putting her hand on her chest, as if she felt a failing of breath. Then the blood came back to her face and her eyes filled with tears.
"Don't—don't look at me like that," she said in a whisper. His pity hurt her.
At sight of her sitting there pathetic, abashed, bewildered, like some gentle animal, Will's throat contracted so that he could not speak. His voice came at last in one terrible cry—
"Oh, Agnes! for God's sake forgive me!" He knelt by her side and put his arm about her shoulders and kissed her bowed head. A curious numbness involved his whole body; his voice was husky, the tears burned in his eyes. His whole soul and body ached with his pity and remorseful, self-accusing wrath.
"It was all my fault. Lay it all to me.… I am the one to bear it.… Oh, I've dreamed a thousand times of sayin' this to you, Aggie! I thought if I could only see you again and ask your forgiveness, I'd—" He ground his teeth together in his assault upon himself. "I threw my life away an' killed you—that's what I did!"
He rose, and raged up and down the room till he had mastered himself.
"What did you think I meant that day of the thrashing?" he said, turning suddenly. He spoke of it as if it were but a month or two past.
She lifted her head and looked at him in a slow way. She seemed to be remembering. The tears lay on her hollow cheeks.
"I thought you was ashamed of me. I didn't know—why—"
He uttered a snarl of self-disgust.