The girl’s hands dropped on the rail and her fingers tightened as her eyes, deeply pained, went off across the wake. She seemed unable to help him, unable to do more than give back monosyllabic responses to the things he said.
“Of course, I can’t assume that the promise you gave me—before all this—still stands, unless you can ratify it. I’m the same man, yet quite a different man.”
At last she turned, and he saw that her lashes were wet with tears.
“Some day,” she suggested almost pleadingly, “some day surely you will be able to clear your name—now that you’re free to give yourself to it.”
He shook his head, “That is going to be the purpose of my life,” he answered. “But God only knows——”
“When you have done that,” she impetuously exclaimed, “come back to me. I’ll wait.”
But Spurrier shook his head and stiffened a little, not indignantly, but painfully, and his face grew paler than it had yet been.
“That is generous of you,” he said slowly. “That is the best I had the right to hope for—but it’s not enough. It would be a false position for you—with a mortgage of doubt on your future. I’ve got to face this thing nakedly. I’ve got to depend only on those people who don’t need proof—who simply know that I must be innocent of—of this because it would be impossible for me to be guilty of it—people,” he added, his voice rising with just a moment’s betrayal of 30 boyish passion, “who will take the seeming facts, just as they are, and still say, ‘Damn the facts!’”
“Can I do that?” She asked the question honestly, with eyes in which sincere tears glistened, and at last words came in freshet volume. “Can I ignore the fact that father is in public life, where his affairs and those of his family are public property? You know he is talked of as presidential timber. Can I ask him to move heaven and earth to give you back your liberty—and then have his critics say that it was all for a member of his own family—a private use of public power?”
“Then you want your promise back?” he demanded quietly.