Her words rushed from her, in them the throb of her heart. "No! No! I can't give them back—no one can. Oh, what a wrong it was!"
He stared at her. The wrath and bitterness on his face slowly gave place to surprise.
"Oh, but it was a shame!" she cried, her face aflame, her voice aquiver. And then a sense of the irretrievableness of this wreck laid hold upon her and a quick sob broke forth. She felt a sympathetic agony for Rogers, and an agony that she, through her blood, was the cause of his wrecked life.
"Oh, it was terrible, terrible! You are right! Restitution cannot be made—only the pitiful restitution of money. But you must let me make that—you must!"
He felt that he was speaking to a friend, and it was as to a friend that he said quietly: "I can't."
"But you must!" She was now thinking of but one thing, how to force him to take the bills. "I'm not doing you a favour. I'm asking a favour from you. I come to you in humility, contrition. The money I bring is not my money—it is your money. My father entered your house and took it; I bring it back to you. You merely accept your own. You see that, don't you? Surely you see that!"
Rogers did not answer at once. He was so dazed by the rush of her words—words that sprang from complete sympathy and understanding, words that might have come from his own heart—that he could not.
She had risen and now stood above him. "You understand, don't you?" she went on imploringly. "My father has done wrong; I feel it just as though I had done it. I must repair the wrong as far as I can. You must take this money for my sake, don't you see?"
He rose and started to speak, but she cut him off. "I know what is in your heart; your pride wants you to refuse. If you refuse, you do only one thing: you deny me the relief of partially correcting a wrong. That is all. Is it right for you to deny me that? Will you yourself not be doing a wrong?"
He was trembling; she had taken the only road to his consent. But he made no motion toward the money in her outstretched hand.