"Oh, yes. Forgiveness is one of the few things you men can not rob us of." She spoke without bitterness, but her eyes were dim and her lips dropped. "What shall we do? They must not know that we have met."
"Cathewe knows," moodily.
"I had forgotten!"
"I leave all in your hands. Do what you will. If you break me—and
God knows well that you can do it—it would be only an act of justice.
I have been a damned scoundrel; I am man enough to admit of that."
She saw his face more clearly now. Time had marked it. There were new lines at the corners of his eyes and the cheek-bones were more prominent. Perhaps he had suffered too. "You will always have the courage to do," she said, "right or wrong in a great manner."
"Am I wrong to seek—"
"Hush! I know. It is what you must thrust aside or break to reach it,
Karl. The thing itself is not wrong, but you will go about it wrongly.
You can not help that."
He did not reply. Perhaps she was right. Indeed, was she not herself an example of it? If there was one thing in his complex career that he regretted more than another it was the deception of this woman. He did not possess the usual vanity of the sex; there was nothing here to be proud of; his dream of conquest was not over the kingdom of women.
"Some one is coming," he said, listening.
"Leave it all to me."