"I have no defence to offer," the speaker went on. "If you have heard all that I believe, no further explanation is necessary. You know the worst; and as a proud woman, with honor unspotted and beyond suspicion, you have a right to pass what sentence you choose upon my—my shame, my crime, if you will!"
Perfect silence for an instant, then a broken sob from Elsie, whose face was streaming with tears denied to both the others, and who was leaning her forehead against the sharp corner of one of the columns of the piazza, apparently that the slight physical pain thus inflicted might do something to still the mental agony that raged within. Then Margaret Hayley, as if she had passed through a long struggle but conquered at last with a triumph slaying her own soul, raised her head, drew in a hard breath, shook back one of the tresses of her dark hair which had fallen over her brow, and spoke:
"Do you know, Carlton Brand—I cannot call you Mr. Brand again, for that address is mockery after what we have been to each other—do you know what that sentence must be, in justice to myself and to you?"
"I can guess it, Margaret Hayley," was the answer, the prefix changed again in imitation of her, just as she a moment before had changed it in imitating him. The incident was a mere nothing, and yet suggestive as showing how closely the two seemed to study each other, and how much of real sympathy there must after all have been between them. "I can guess it, and I will try to bear it."
"You can guess it—you do guess it—separation!" said Margaret in a low voice that she could not quite render firm.
"I was not mistaken—I supposed as much," he answered. "You are a proud woman, Margaret, and you could not marry a man for whom you failed to entertain respect—"
"I am a proud woman, but a woman still," said Margaret. "You whom I have loved so truly, can best guess the depth of my woman's nature. But I cannot and will not marry a man to whom I cannot look up and say: 'This man has the courage and the will to protect me in every peril!'"
"Have you ever had reason to believe that I could not and would not protect you, if need came, against all the world?" and his eyes momentarily flashed, at that thought, with a light which should not have shone in the orbs of a coward.
"Words are idle, Carlton Brand!" said Margaret. "There is no protection so sacredly due as that of a strong man to his country. You know it, and I know it as well. The man who knows his duty to his country and dares not do it, through sheer bodily fear, could not be trusted in any relation. His wife would not dare trust him, if she knew it; and you have opened my eyes but too painfully. And so, in mercy to both, all must be over between us—"
"Oh, do not say that, Margaret, sister!" broke out Elsie, in a more faltering voice than she had ever used in pleading for herself since the earliest day of childhood. Margaret did not heed her, if she heard, but went on from the point at which she had been interrupted: