"You want to help me!" was all he could say.
"Yes. Won't you let me—please!"
He throbbed with exultation. "Then you believe I am now honest!"
"You have proved that you are—proved it by the way you have resisted temptation during these four terrible months."
His eyes suddenly sank from hers to the floor. Her words had brought back New Year's eve. She had come to him with friendship because she was certain of his unfallen determination to make his new life an honest life. If she knew of that night in Allen's house, would she be giving him this praise, this offer?
The temptation to say nothing rose, but he could not requite frankness and sincerity such as hers with the lie of silence—he could not accept her friendship under false pretenses. He looked up and gazed at her steadily.
"I am innocent where you thought me guilty, but"—he paused; the truth was hard—"but I am guilty where you think me innocent."
She paled. "What do you mean?" she asked in a fearing voice.
"I have not resisted temptation."
He saw that his words had hurt her, and there was a flash of wonder that a lapse of his should give her pain. An appeal, full of colour, of feeling, that would justify himself to her was rising to his lips, but before it passed them he suddenly felt himself so much the wronged that his confession came forth an abrupt outline of his acts, spoken with no shame.