"It was several years ago—nearly seven. I was on the point of death—had been told to expect death within a few months.... In a moment of sentimental sympathy—I wasn't at all myself—I married a girl I'd never seen before, to help her out of a desperate scrape she'd got into—meaning simply to give her the protection of my name. She was in bad trouble.... We never lived together, never even saw one another after that hour. She had every reason to think me dead—as I should have been, by rights. But now she knows that I'm alive—is about to sue for a divorce.... Now you know just what sort of a contemptible hound I am, and why it was so hard to tell you."
After a long pause, during which neither stirred, she told him, in a faint voice: "Thank you."
She moved toward the house.
"I throw myself upon your mercy—"
"Do you?" she said coolly, pausing.
"If you will forgive me—"
"Oh, I forgive you, Mr. Whitaker. My heart is really not quite so fragile as all this implies."
"I didn't mean that—you know I didn't. I'm only trying to assure you that I won't bother you—with this trouble of mine—again. I don't want you to be afraid of me."
"I am not."
The words were terse and brusque enough; the accompanying swift gesture, in which her hand rested momentarily on his arm as if in confidence approaching affection, he found oddly contradictory.