Something cold and death-like clutched Lynda’s heart. It was as if an icy wave had swept warmth and safety before it, leaving her aghast and afraid.
“Yes, I knew.”
“Will you tell me—I could not go into this with McPherson, somehow; he didn’t see it my way, naturally—will you tell me what would have become of the—the fortune had I not married you?”
The deathly whiteness of Lynda’s face did not stay Truedale’s hard words; he was not thinking of her—even of himself; he was thinking of the irony of fate in the broad sense.
“The money would have—come to me.” Then, as if to divert any further misunderstanding. “And when I refused it—it would have reverted to charities.”
“I see. And you did this for me, Lyn! How little even you understood. Now that I have the cursed money I do not know what to do with it—how to get rid of it. Still it was like you, Lynda, to sacrifice yourself in order that I might have what you thought was my due. You always did that, from girlhood. I might have known no other woman could have done what you have done, no such woman as you, Lyn, without a mighty motive; but you did not know me, really!”
And now, looking at Lynda, it was like looking at a dead face—a face from which warmth and light had been stricken.
“I—do not know what you—mean, Con,” she said, vaguely.
“Being you, Lyn, you couldn’t have taken the money, yourself, particularly if you had declined to marry me. A lesser woman would have done it without a qualm, feeling justified in outwitting so cruel a thing as the bequest; but not you! You saw no other way, so you—you with your high ideals and clear beliefs—you married the man I am—in order to—to give me—my own. Oh, Lyn, what a sacrifice!”
“Stop!” Lynda rose from her chair and, by a wide gesture, swept the marks of her trade far from her. In so doing she seemed to make space to breathe and think.