“I’m sorry—so sorry!” Doctor West shook his head. Apparently he had forgotten the significance of this confession to himself. “I have always loved Elsie, and I have always admired you and been proud of you. So if my forgiveness means anything to you, why I forgive you with all my heart!”
A choking sound came from the bowed figure, but no words. His embracing arms fell away from Doctor West. He knelt there limply, his head bowed upon his bosom. There was a moment of breathless silence. In the background Miss Sherman stood looking on, white, tense, dry-eyed.
Doctor Sherman turned slowly, fearfully, toward the bed.
“But, Elsie,” he whispered in a dry, lost voice. “It’s all bad—but that’s the worst of all. When she knows, she never can forgive me!”
Katherine laid a hand upon his shoulder.
“If you think that, then you don’t know Elsie. She will be pained, but she loves you with all her soul; she would forgive you anything so long as you loved her, and she would follow you through every misery to the ends of the world.”
“Do you think so?” he breathed; and then he crept to the bed and buried his face upon it.
Katherine looked down upon him for a moment. Then her own concerns began flooding back upon her. She realized that she had not yet won the fight. She had only gained a weapon.
“I must go now,” she whispered to her father, taking the paper from his hand.
Throbbing with returned excitement, she hurried out to the dimly comprehended, desperate effort that lay before her.