"Nothing else?"
"I wished to prove to Lois that I could never be her husband."
"You were afraid that she would see through your pretense to your unchanged affection for her?"
He started.
"Beatrice, how do you know?"
"Look in your own glass, John. Yours isn't the face of a man who has shaken off an old attachment."
He rose and stood with his back half turned to her, playing idly with the papers on the table.
"You are partly right," he said, after a moment's silence, "but not quite. I have more on my shoulders than that; I have a heavy responsibility—a debt to pay."
"You, too?" she asked, with a return of the half-melancholy, half-bitter smile. "Have you also a debt?"
"Not of my making," was the answer. The voice rang suddenly stern and harsh, and Beatrice saw him look up suddenly, as though instinctively seeking something on the wall. "Beatrice, you must know that my actions are dictated by motives which I can not for many reasons give to the world. For one thing, I have given my promise; for another, my own judgment tells me that it is better for every one that I should be silent. But I am free to say this much to you—I am not a dishonorable man who has played lightly with the affections of an innocent girl. I have acted toward Lois as I believe will be for her ultimate happiness—I have shielded her from a misfortune, a punishment I might say, which would have fallen unjustly on her shoulders. I have taken a burden upon my shoulders because I love her—and I have the right to love her—but chiefly because it is my duty to do so. Where there is sin, Beatrice, there must also be atonement, otherwise its consequences can never be wiped out. I have chosen to atone."