After all, he had known her only a short time—and now he realized that he did not know her well: 28 certainly not well enough to estimate with any surety how they would meet again, after an interval which had tarnished the name that had come to him from two generations of accrued distinction.
He bent forward, and, in a low voice, spoke her name, and she turned without a start so that she stood looking into his eyes.
“I suppose you know,” he began, and for once he spoke without self-assurance, “that I didn’t hunt you out sooner because I wanted to spare you embarrassment. I knew you were sailing by this boat—and so I took it, too.”
She nodded her head, but remained silent. Her eyes met his and lingered, but they were like curtained windows and told him nothing. It was as if she wished to let him pitch the plane of their meeting without interference, and he was grateful.
“I don’t suppose,” he began, forcing himself to speak with forthright directness, “I need protest my innocence to you—and I don’t suppose I need confess that the stigma will stick to me—that in—some quarters—it will mean ostracism. I wanted to meet you the first time alone as much for your sake as my own.”
“I know——” she agreed faintly, but there was no rush of confidence, of sympathy that thought only of the black situation in which he stood.
“I know, too,” he went on with the same steadiness, “that but for your father’s efforts I should have had to spend the rest of my life in prison. Above all, I know that your father made those efforts because you ordained it.”
“It was too horrible,” she whispered with a little shudder. “It was inconceivable.”
“It still is,” he reminded her. “There is a question, then, to be asked—a question for you to answer.”