“Because?” There was panic in Arthur’s heart. Was she not a widow, after all?
She drew a deep breath, and bit her lip. Her cheek had been pale. Now a hot blush suffused it. With an air of summoning her utmost strength, she went on, “You never can marry me, because you never would marry me—never, unless I should tell you—something—something about my life—my life in the past—which I can never tell—not even to you.”
“Oh!” cried Arthur, with manifest relief. “Is that all?”
“It is enough—it is final, fatal.”
“Oh, I thought it might be worse.”
There befell a silence. Arthur was mustering his forces, to get them under control.. He dared not speak till he had done this. At last, struggling hard to be calm, he said, “Do you suppose I care any thing about your past life? Do you suppose that my love for you is so mean and so small as that? I know all that it is needful for me to know about your past. I know you, do I not? I know, then, that every act, every thought, every breath of your life, has been as pure and as beautiful as you are yourself. But what I know best, and what it is most essential for me to know, is this, Ruth, that I love you. I love you! I can not see that what you have spoken of is a bar to our marriage.”
“Ah, but I—I would not let you enter blindfold into a union which some time you might repent. Should I be worthy of your love, if I would? But, what is worse, were I—were I to tell you this thing—which I can not tell you—then you—you would not ask me to marry you. Then you would not love me. The truth—the truth which, if I should become your wife, I could never share with you—which would remain forever a secret kept by me from my husband—it is—you would abhor me if you should find it out. If you should find it out after we were married—if somebody should come to you and tell you—oh, you would hate me. It is far more dreadful than you can fancy.”
“No—no; for I will fancy the worst, and still beg of you to become my wife. If I loved you less—if I did not know you so well—the hints you utter might prompt some horrible suspicion in my mind. Will you take it as a proof of my love, that I dare assert positively, confidently, this?—Whatever the past may have been, so far as you were concerned in shaping it, it was good beyond reproach. Whatever your secret may be, it is not a secret that could show you to be one jot or tittle less noble than I know you to be. Whatever the truth you speak of is, it is a truth which, if it were understood in its entirety, would only serve to shed new luster upon the whiteness of your soul. And should I—should I by accident ever find it out—and should its form seem, as you have said, dreadful to me—why, I should say to myself, ’You have not pierced its substance? You do not understand it. However it may appear to you, you know that your wife’s part in it was the part of a good angel from first to last 1’—Now do you think I love you?”
“But if—if you should find out that I had been guilty of sin—do you mean to say that—that you would care for me in spite of that?”
“I mean to say that I love you. I mean to say that no power under heaven can destroy my love of you. I mean to say that no power under heaven can prevent my marrying you, if you love me. I mean to say that my heart and soul—the \ inmost life of me—are already married to you, and that they will remain inseparably bound to you—to you!—until I die. More than this I mean to say. You speak of sin. You sin, forsooth! Well, talk of sin, if you like. Tell me that you have been guilty of—of what you will—of the blackest crimes in the calendar. I will not believe it. I will not believe that you were answerable for it. I will tell you that it was not your fault. I will tell you that if your hand has ever done any human being wrong, it was some other will than your own that compelled it. For this I know—I know it as I know that fire burns, that light illuminates—I know that you, the true, intrinsic you, have always been as sweet and undefiled as—as the breath that escapes now from your lips. There are some things that can not be—that no man could believe, though he beheld them with his open eyes. Can a circle be square? Can black be white? No man, knowing you as I know you, could believe that you in your soul were capable of sin.”