He shook his head. If there was one person above all others from whom he could not accept service, that person was the woman he loved and who, he was certain, beneath her courteous control, must despise him. He had always known she believed him guilty, yet he had not half fore-measured the pain the eye-knowledge of it would give him. He longed to tell her the truth, as he often had longed before, and as he often would again—but he dared not, for to tell one person was to endanger, perhaps destroy, all the good of his act. Besides, even if he were to tell, who would believe him? She? No. She would believe, as the rest of the world would believe, that his statement was a dastardly attempt to whiten himself by blackening the memory of his sainted friend.
"You are certain I can do nothing?"
"Nothing," he said.
"Pardon me for being insistent, but—" she hesitated, white with the stress of the situation, then forced herself to go on—"the boy said that—that you had—nothing. Are you sure I can not do some little thing for you?"
At this moment David forgot that he was penniless, forgot that he had no work for the time when he left his bed, and probably could find none; remembered only how he loved this woman, and how low he was in her eyes.
"The boy was not telling the truth," he said. "We have plenty. We need nothing—thank you."
She could not speak of the past; her delicacy forbade her. She could not query into his present intentions; her judgment on him, subconsciously rendered upon circumstantial evidence, and supported by his past, made that unnecessary. And, furthermore, the whirling confusion within her made speech on both impossible. The one surface fact her emotions could allow her speech upon, that she had spoken of. She felt she must get away as quickly as she could.
She rose. His wide, love-hungry eyes gathered in every one of her last motions and expressions. He did not know when, if ever, he would see her again.
There was a sharp knock at the door. She held out her hand to him. He was not expecting this, but he laid his wasted hand tremblingly within it.
"Good-bye," she said.