Bernal interrupted.
"Are you talking to yourself, or to me?"
The rector of St. Antipas turned at one end of his walk.
"To both of us, brother. I tell you there has been nothing between us—never anything except the most flawless idealism. I admit that at the moment Nancy observed us the circumstances were unluckily such that an excitable, morbidly suspicious woman might have misconstrued them. I will even admit that a woman of judicial mind and of unhurried judgments might not unreasonably have been puzzled, but I would tear my heart open to the world this minute—'Oh, be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny!'"
"If I follow you, old chap, Nancy observed some scene this afternoon in which it occurred to her that I might have been an actor." There was quick pain, a sinking in his heart.
"She had reason to know it was one of us—and if I had denied it was I——"
"I see—why didn't you?"
"I thought she must surely have seen me—and besides"—his voice softened with affection—"do you think, old chap, I would have shifted a misunderstanding like that on to your shoulders. Thank God, I am not yet reduced to shirking the penalties of my own blameless acts, even when they will be cruelly misconstrued."
"But you should have done so—It would mean nothing to me, and everything to you—to that poor girl—poor Nance—always so helpless and wondering and so pathetically ready to believe! She didn't deserve that you take it upon yourself, Allan!"
"No—no, don't urge! I may have made mistakes, though I will say that few men of my—well, my attractions! Why not say it bluntly?—few men of my attractions, placed as I have been, would have made so few— but I shall never be found shirking their consequences —it is not in my nature, thank God, to let another bear the burden—I can always be a man!——"