The girl smiled sadly:
"Yet you might have guessed that I had learned to cherish honor and purity before I knew I might not claim them as my birthright!"
"Forgive me, child," he said contritely, "if in my eagerness, my fear, my anguish, I hurt you. But I had to ask that question! I had to know. Your answer gives me courage"—he paused and his voice quivered with deep intensity—"you really love Tom?"
"The big, wonderful love that comes to the human soul but once?"
"Yes!"
His eyes were piercing to the depths now:
"With the deep, unselfish yearning that asks nothing for itself and seeks only the highest good of its beloved?"
"Yes—yes," she answered mechanically and, pausing, looked again into his burning eyes; "but you frighten me—" she grasped a chair for support, recovered herself and went on rapidly—"you mustn't ask me to give him up—I won't give him up! Poor and friendless, with a shadow over my life and everything against me, I have won him and he's mine! I have the right to his love—I didn't ask to be born. I must live my own life. I have as much right to happiness as you. Why must I bear the sins of my father and mother? Have I broken the law? Haven't I a heart that can ache and break and cry for joy?"
He allowed the first paroxysm of her emotion to spend itself before he replied, and then in quiet tones said: