She stopped a moment, and cast a little glance of appeal at him. "I have tried to think that she must have distorted things. It would have been no more than natural. If I had borne what she has I would have done the same. One could not regard them correctly. Bitterness and grief must influence one's point of view."
The man turned his face from her, and moved away a pace or two as if in pain. Then once more he turned toward her with a compassionate gesture, for he knew that the blow would be a heavy one to her, and it was almost insufferable that his hand should be the one to deal it.
"Then anything I could say would not be more reliable. My views would as naturally be distorted too."
"Still, I should have an answer. You must realize that, and if it is one that hurts I should sooner it came from you than anybody else."
Jimmy drew in his breath. "Then, while I don't know exactly what Eleanor has said, or whether I can forgive her that cruelty, I think you could believe every word of it."
The color faded from Anthea's face, and she looked at him with a faint horror in her eyes and her lips tight set. She could not doubt him. If there had been no other reason, the pity she saw he had for her was proof enough, and for a moment or two she forgot everything but the grim fact to which Eleanor Wheelock had forced her to listen. She could make no excuses for her father now.
She saw him suddenly as she felt that he was a creature of insatiable greed, cunning, unscrupulous, and without pity, and then she commenced to feel intolerably lonely. It was almost as though he had died, and the longing for the love of the man who stood watching her with grave sympathy in his eyes grew so strong that for the moment she was sensible of nothing else. There was nobody but him to whom she could turn. It was, she felt, his part to comfort her; and then she shivered as she remembered that circumstances had placed that out of the question. The injury her father had done him must, it seemed, always stand between them, and she shrank back a pace from him.
"Ah!" she said, "you must hate me for that, Jimmy."
It was half an assertion, and, though she had perhaps not consciously intended the latter, half a question, and the man recognized the dismay in it. He strode forward, and seizing both her hands laid them on his shoulders, and drew her to him masterfully. For a moment he used compulsion, and then she clung to him quivering with her head on his breast.
"Dear," he said, "it is not your fault. You had no part in it, and, even had it been so, I think I could not have helped loving you. As it is, there is nothing in this world could make me hate you."