“Unfortunately, that’s out of your power,” he said coldly. “You only had power to wreck it.”
He glanced down distastefully at the hand on his sleeve, and she withdrew it hastily. But, with a sudden strength of purpose, born of her infinite longing to repair the harm she had done, she persisted, daring his anger.
“There’s Ann,” she said simply.
She was surprised it hurt so little to put it into words—the fact that he loved another woman. But, since the day she had first realised that he cared for Ann, she had been schooling herself to a certain stoical resignation. She recognised that she had forfeited her own claim to love when she had married Dene Hilyard because he had more of this world’s goods than the man to whom she had given her heart, and she felt no actual jealousy of Ann—only a wistful envy of the girl for whom the love of Eliot Coventry might yet create the heaven on earth which she herself had thrown away.
“There’s Ann,” she said.
For an instant Eliot’s face seemed convulsed, twisted into a grim mask of agony.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “There’s Ann. And because of you, I can’t believe in her.”
It was like an accusation flung straight in her face. She shrank back as though he had struck her. So he cared for Ann—like that.... And because of what she had done, because of her sin of ten years ago, he would not trust her—would not trust any woman.
“You make my ‘account rendered’ a very heavy one,” she said unsteadily. Then, on a note of increasing urgency: “Don’t judge Ann—by me, Eliot. She’s different ... the kind of woman God meant women to be. If you care for her, you won’t make her pay—for what I did.”
His expression altered slightly. A new look came into his eyes—of uncertainty, as though he were regarding things from some fresh angle. But he made no answer, and before Cara could speak again Robin’s cheerful voice broke in upon them.