When he had finished the long story of his acceptance of Morton's guilt and of what had followed, she sat gazing at him with her look of awe.
"I shall never stop being amazed that a man could do a thing like that," she said. "It was wonderful!"
He shook his head. "No," he said slowly, "the real wonder is that you could learn to love a man whom you believed to be a criminal." For a moment he looked silently into her eyes; this great thing that had come to pass still seemed hardly true. "That's the wonder—Helen."
It was the first time he had used her name, and he spoke it with a fervent hesitancy. He repeated it softly, "Helen!"
She flushed. "I loved you long before I thought you were guilty," she said. "It seems that I have always loved you."
"Always!" he repeated, amazed. "Always?—just as I've always loved you?"
"Yes."
For a space he was lost in his astonishment. "It doesn't seem possible. What was there in me to make you love me?"
"I loved you because of your idealism, because there was an indefinable something in you that was good and great. I loved you—Oh, I don't know why I loved you. I just loved you. And how I felt when I thought you had taken the money! Oh, David, it was——"
"Say it again!" he broke in.