He turned and stared at her curiously. "I don't know what to think," he said. "I can not believe—"
"You mu-must believe. I have no right to profit by your disbelief…. Dear Mr. Maitland, you have been kind to me, very kind to me; do me this last kindness, if you will."
The young face turned to him was gravely and perilously sweet; very nearly he forgot all else. But that she would not have.
"Do this for me…. What you will find will explain everything. You will understand. Perhaps"—timidly—"perhaps you may even find it in your heart to forgive, when you understand…. If you should, my card-case is in the bag, and …." She faltered, biting her lip cruelly to steady a voice quivering with restrained sobs. "Please, please go at once, and—and see for yourself!" she implored him passionately.
Of a sudden he found himself resolved. Indeed, he fancied that it were dangerous to oppose her; she was overwrought, on the verge of losing her command of self. She wished this thing, and though with all his soul he hated it, he would do as she desired.
"Very well," he assented quietly. "Shall I stop the cab now?"
"Please."
He tapped on the roof of the hansom and told the cabby to draw in at the next corner. Thus he was put down not far from his home,—below the Thirty-third Street grade.
Neither spoke as he alighted, and she believed that he was leaving her in displeasure and abhorrence; but he had only stepped behind the cab for a moment to speak to the driver. In a moment he was back, standing by the step with one hand on the apron and staring in very earnestly and soberly at the shadowed sweetness of her pallid face, that gleamed in the gloom there like some pale, shy, sad flower.
Could there be evil combined with such sheer loveliness, with features that in every line bodied forth the purity of the spirit that abode within? In the soul of him he could not believe that a thief's nature fed canker-like at the heart of a woman so divinely, naively dear and desirable. And … he would not.