He was watching her closely.
“I thought perhaps, if she consented, I would marry Lydia Orr,” he forced himself to tell her. “I want you to know this from me, now. I decided that her money and her position would help me.... I admired her; I even thought at one time I—loved her. I tried to love her.... I am not quite so base as to marry without love.... But she knew. She tried to save me.... Then her father—that wretched, ruined man came to me. He told me everything.... Fanny, that girl is a saint!”
His eyes were inscrutable under their somber brows. The girl sitting stiffly erect, every particle of color drained from her young face, watched him with something like terror. Why was he telling her this?—Why? Why?
His next words answered her:
“I can conceive of no worse punishment than having you think ill of me.” ... And after a pause: “I deserve everything you may be telling yourself.”
But coherent thought had become impossible for Fanny.
“Why don’t you marry her?” she asked clearly.
“Oh, I asked her. I knew I had been a cad to both of you. I asked her all right.”
Fanny’s fingers, locked rigidly in her lap, did not quiver. Her blue eyes were wide and strange, but she tried to smile.
His voice, harsh and hesitating, went on: “She refused me, of course. She had known all along what I was. She said she did not love me; that I did not love her—which was God’s truth. I wanted to atone. You see that, don’t you?”