“Think just a moment, and you will see that what you ask is quite impossible. Just think a moment.”
He was silent for a time. A tremor ran through him, his body stiffened.
“No, I do not ask it,” he said. “I am not trying to excuse myself now, but when a thing falls so unexpectedly, so suddenly——” A choking at the throat stopped him. “If I have seemed to whimper, I take it back. You have beaten me, Katherine. But I hope I can take defeat like a man.”
She did not answer.
They continued gazing at one another. In the silence of the great house they could hear each other’s agitated breathing. Into his dark face, now turned so gray, there crept a strange, drawn look—a look that sent a tingling through all her body.
“What is it?” she asked.
“To think,” he exclaimed in a low, far-away voice, almost to himself, “that I have lost everything through you! Through you, through whom I might have gained everything!”
“Gained everything? Through me?” she repeated. “How?”
“I am sure I would have kept out of such things—as this—if, five years ago, you had said ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’.”
“Said yes?” she breathed.