This was utterly different from anything that I had ever expected! "But," I stammered, "from the way you looked at me first when—when you ran out at the door, and then again when, I had to tell them who you were! I thought—"
I heard the sweep of his serape as he leaned forward toward me. "I hated, for your own sake, that you should see anything so hideous. When I came out of that door and saw you there on the other side of the street, do you know what you seemed to me? You seemed to me like the reminder of everything good I had ever hoped for or believed in, looking at me across that distance, horrified at me. It was that I could not bear." His voice sounded harsh and uncertain, but it was better to hear than the even off-hand tone he had used at first.
"I hated to see you have to go through that sordid business in the police station," he said, "hated to have you dragged through the court, to think you had to touch such things, even to know that they exist. I could not forgive myself! But what are you doing here alone at this hour of the night?" He broke off suddenly. The half stern, half protecting note made my heart beat.
"I was at a ball," I stammered. "I came away suddenly because—because I couldn't bear it. I heard them talking behind the curtains. They said it was I who had convicted you."
A touch came on my hand as if it had been the point of a finger, "Believe me, that is nonsense. It was I who convicted myself."
I turned toward him. I would have given anything, in that moment, for a glimpse of his face.
"If you did anything at all toward that end," he went on steadily, "remember you only helped me toward what I really wanted to do."
I kept my eyes fixed on that space of darkness from which his voice came. "If you wanted to convict yourself then why did you try to escape?"
There was quite an interval while I waited, trembling on the brink of the mystery. When at last he spoke his voice sounded a note of reserve. The unconscious intimateness was gone.
"Whatever my motive in convicting myself has been, let me assure you it has put me so far away from you that I am hardly worthy even to speak to you. But I feared you had been troubled about giving your evidence, and I am glad of this one chance to tell you that you have helped rather than hurt me. But now it is all over; you will not have to worry or think about it any more, for what I am going to do now will put me quite out of your sight."