"Oh, you never took it!"
The voice dripped with tears, vibrated with a rising note of triumph.
"To think what you've gone through!" she marvelled on, quaveringly. "Your struggles—such struggles!—and everybody believing you dishonoured. And all the time, you being this splendid thing that you are!" A great sob surged up.
He was still whirling and still saw her face hazily. But his faculties were coming back. "What I did was not active—it was merely passive," he said.
"To achieve by suffering, and be repaid by dishonour—what can be higher?"
She gazed at him, and gazed at him. "And to think that I believed you—you!—guilty! To think that I never sent you even a single word while you were in prison! How I drew away from you when I found you sick in that poor room! How since then I have tried to help you reform! Ah, the irony of that now! And the irony of my proposing to you to pay back the money you never took!"
The words, the voice, had reached the ears of his heart; it was going madly. He gazed into her glorious face, quivering, tear-splashed, into her glorious, swimming eyes. Even in his daringest fancy he had never pictured his innocence affecting her so! He felt himself suddenly a wild, exultant flame. The insuperables were swept out of the world. He was the lover he had tried seven years to stifle.
He had thought the words would never be spoken. But they came out boldly—with a rush.
"I love you!"
She paled slightly. For a moment she looked wonderingly into his eyes. Her head slowly shook.