He paused, but still she did not speak. He looked around into her face, his own twitching with pain.
“I couldn’t endure to see you unhappy. I’d—I’d rather set you free!”
She lifted her head then and met his eyes, and hers were beautiful.
“But—suppose I won’t take it, suppose I wouldn’t take it if I could?”
“I don’t understand. You know that this will ruin me. It’ll take years for me to wipe it out, if I can ever do it.” He turned with a poignant gesture and sank into a chair. “I’ve no right to pull you down. I know how you despise my—my cowardice!”
“Yes,” she replied steadily, “I did; but now, Arthur, can’t you see that you have done a very brave thing? You’ve paid—in your heart’s blood—for it; you’ve given him what’s more to you than your life—your hopes, your ambition, your reputation! When you said that about the candle in the wind you mustn’t think of it as if it meant all that. It’s a man’s life, not his soul—the flame of that may burn low and flicker, but when it springs up, as yours has sprung up, in on act of sacrifice and atonement, it lights the whole way upward and onward. It’s—it’s like a power of growth, of immortal life!”
She stopped for a moment; then she took a step nearer and stood looking at him, a light on her face that was clearer and purer than the light of the setting sun, which shone in through the windows opposite and was reflected on her slender figure and the soft, light color of her gown.
“I—I can’t tell you,” she went on, “how thankful I am—how thankful that you’ve done it, that you’ve atoned, and, as you say, that you’re free—free to begin again, to live it all down!”
As he turned his head slowly and looked up at her his face changed and flushed deeply.
“I—your coming back saved me,” he said in a voice that thrilled with feeling. “I wanted to kill myself, but you came back to me, and in some way—I can’t tell how, but as simply as the coming of daybreak, the change came into my heart. But I’ve had one thing to torture me, to drive me on—I’ve felt—Diane, do you love him still?”