She quivered in every fibre. A strange lucidity came over her. She saw all that had happened as if mirrored in crystal.
"Hear me, Frank," she said, in a clear, bright voice. "Remain where you are and listen to me; listen well. I mean to be true to you, and we shall be happy. I feel that we shall. What has occurred that we should always be miserable? Nothing. I repeat it—nothing. Do not let us spoil our own lives. I doubted you once; you have forgiven me. That is all at an end. You discovered that Bertie was a scoundrel, and you killed him. That, too, is ended. Nothing of all this can matter to me now. I will never think of it again. It has ceased to exist so far as I am concerned.—And that is all, Frank. Consider, reflect—that is all. Nothing else has happened. And that is not much. We are young and strong; we are not really old. And I tell you we can live a new life, somewhere, together; somewhere, a long way from London. A new life, Frank, a new life!—I love you, Frank. You are everything to me. You are my idol, my husband, my darling, my child, my great child."
She clasped his head passionately to her bosom in a rapture, her eyes sparkling, and a flush tinging the azalea whiteness of her cheeks. But his eyes met hers with a look of anguish.
"You are an angel, Eva; you are an angel. But I cannot claim you. For, listen now to me. The real truth—"
"Well, what is the truth?"
"Bertie was not a scoundrel. He was nothing but a man, a very weak man. That is the truth.... Listen to me, Eva; let me speak. I thought a great deal—at Scheveningen—among the sand-hills—you know. I thought over everything I could remember of what he had said to me in those last moments, in self-defence; and by degrees all his words came back to me, and I felt that he had been in the right."
"In the right? Oh, Frank! I do not know what he said in self-defence; but now, still, shall Bertie's influence come between us to part us?" she cried, in bitter despair.
"No, it is not that," he replied. "Make no mistake; it is not Bertie's influence which divides us; it is my guilt."
"Your guilt?"
"My guilt, which rises up before me from time to time, reminding me of what I have done, so that I cannot forget it, shall never forget it.... Let me tell you. He was right in what he said at last. He was a weak creature, he said, flung into life without any strength of will. Was that his fault? He despised himself for having done so mean a thing about those letters. But he had not known what else to do. Well, and I forgive him for being weak, for he could not help it; and we are all weak—I am weak, too."