She laughed. "Please don't ask me to understand you, Mr. Gregory, while you hide the only secret to your understanding. Don't come to me with pretended liking when what you call 'mysterious business interests at Springfield' drive me from your door, and keep Fran at my desk."
He interposed in a low passionate voice. "I am resolved that you should know everything. Fran—is my own daughter."
She gave no sign save a sudden compression of the mouth; nevertheless, her surprise was extreme. Her mind flashed along the wires of the past and returned illuminated to the present entanglement.
He thought her merely stunned, and burst forth: "I tell you, Fran is my child. Now you know why I'm compelled to do what she wants. That's the secret Bob brought from Springfield. That's the secret Abbott Ashton hung over my head—the traitor! after I'd befriended him! All of my ungrateful friends have conspired to ruin me, to force you from me by this secret. But you know it now, and I've escaped its danger. You know it!"
"And does your wife know?"
"Would I tell her, and not tell you? It's you I've tried to shield. I married Josephine Derry, and Fran is our child. You know Fran. Well, her mother was just like her—frivolous, caring only for things of the world—irreligious. And I was just a boy—a mere college youth. When I realized the awful mistake I'd made, I thought it best just to go away and let her live her own life. Years after, I put all that behind me, and came to Littleburg. I married Mrs. Gregory and I wanted to put all my past life away—clear away—and live a good open life. Then you came. Then I found out I'd never known what love meant. It means a fellowship of souls, love does; it has nothing to do with the physical man. It means just your soul and mine…and it's too late!"
Grace, with hands locked upon her open ledger, stared straight before her, as if turned to stone. The little fenced-in box, hanging high above eager shoppers, was as a peaceful haven in a storm of raging noises. From without, gusts of merriment shrieked and whistled, while above them boomed the raucous cries of showmen, drowned in their turn by the indefatigable brass-band. The atmosphere of the bookkeeper's loft was a wedge of silence, splitting a solidarity of tumult.
Gregory covered his face with his hands. "Do you despise me, you pure angel of beauty? Oh, say you don't utterly despise me. I've not breathed this secret to any living soul but you, you whom I love with the madness of despair. My heart is broken. Tell me what I can do."
At last Grace spoke in a thin tone: "Where is that woman?"
"Fran's mother?"