She drew nearer to him, her hands pressed tightly together.
“Eliot, you’re deliberately going to throw away your happiness if you distrust Ann,” she urged, beseechingly, “I’ve told you, she’s not like me. She’s different.”
“She’s no better and no worse than other women, I suppose,” he returned implacably. “Ready to take whatever goods the gods provide—and then go on to the next.”
Cara turned aside in despair. She could not tell—could not guess—what had happened. She only knew that the man whose happiness meant more to her than her own, and the woman she had learned to love as a friend, had somehow come to irretrievable misunderstanding and disaster. At last she turned back again to Eliot.
“Would you have believed this of her—whatever it is you do believe—if it had not been for me?”
He reflected a moment.
“Perhaps not,” he said.
She uttered a cry that was half a sob. So the price of that one terrible mistake she had made was not yet paid! Fate would go on exacting the penalty for ever—first the destruction of her own happiness, then that of Eliot and of Ann. All must be hurled into the bottomless well of expiation. There was no forgiveness of sins.
It was useless to plead with Eliot—to reason with him. It was she herself who had poisoned the very springs of life for him, and now she was powerless to cleanse them. With a gesture of utter hopelessness she turned and left him, and made her way despondently homeward through the gathering dusk.
She reached the Priory just in time to encounter Robin coming out of the gates. He sprang off his horse and greeted her delightedly.