She looked at him in pained astonishment. The tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, how can you!” she exclaimed. “How can you say that to me? How can you think it? As if that would make any difference! I learned your father's name and—and what he had done—by accident. It was only the night before you came. It would have made no difference to me. For myself I didn't care—but—Oh, Crawford, how can you think it was because he was—that?”
His eyes were shining.
“I don't think it,” he cried triumphantly. “I never have thought it, Mary. I believe—ever since I knew, I have dared to believe that you sent me away because you were trying to save me from disgrace. You had learned who and what my father had been and I did not know. And you feared that if you married me the secret might come out and I would be ashamed, my career would be spoiled, and all that. I have dared to believe this and that is why I came back to you—to ask if it was true. Can't you see? I HAD to come. IS it true, Mary?”
He came toward her. She would have run away if she could, but there was nowhere to run.
“Look at me, Mary,” he commanded. “Look at me, and tell me this: It wasn't because you didn't love me that you sent me away? It wasn't really that, was it? Tell me the truth. Look at me now, and tell me.”
She tried to look and she tried to speak, but her glance faltered and fell before his and the words would not come. She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. She put up her hands in mute protest, but the protest was unavailing. His arms were about her, his kisses were upon her lips, and he was telling her the things which are told in times like these. And she struggled no longer, but permitted herself to listen, to believe, to accept, and to be swept away by the wonderful current of love and destiny against which she had fought so long.
But the struggle was not entirely over. She made one more effort.
“Oh, Crawford!” she cried a little later. “Oh, Crawford, dear, this is all wrong. It can't be. It mustn't be. Don't you see it mustn't? We have forgotten Uncle Zoeth. He doesn't know whose son you are. If he should learn, it would bring back the old story and the old trouble. He isn't well. The shock might kill him.”
But Crawford merely smiled.
“He does know, Mary,” he said. “Father wrote him. I shall tell you the whole story just as Dad told it to me. Heaven knows it was not a pleasant one for a son to hear, but I am glad I heard it. The past was bad, but it is past. You and I have the future for our own and I mean to make it a clean one and a happy one for us both, God willing.”