“I thought my fault had been that I was too frank.”
“I was densely stupid, and you might have made me understand better.”
“Ah,” said Angela, “you ask a great deal of a girl!”
“Why have you let me go on so long thinking that my deluded words had had an effect upon Gordon—feeling that I had done you a brutal wrong? It was real to me, the wrong—and I have told you of the pangs and the shame which, for so many months, it has cost me! Why have you never undeceived me until to-day, and then only by accident?”
At this question Angela blushed a little; then she answered, smiling—
“It was my vengeance.”
Bernard shook his head.
“That won’t do—you don’t mean it. You never cared—you were too proud to care; and when I spoke to you about my fault, you did n’t even know what I meant. You might have told me, therefore, that my remorse was idle, that what I said to Gordon had not been of the smallest consequence, and that the rupture had come from yourself.”
For some time Angela said nothing, then at last she gave him one of the deeply serious looks with which her face was occasionally ornamented.
“If you want really to know, then—can’t you see that your remorse seemed to me connected in a certain way with your affection; a sort of guarantee of it? You thought you had injured some one or other, and that seemed to be mixed up with your loving me, and therefore I let it alone.”