Belhaven, who had never been greatly loved, looked at her with a kind of despair. A great change had been wrought in the nature of the man. He had seen only women like Eva before, or worse women, and there were places in his past which he would not have liked those clear eyes of Rachel's to look upon; indeed, there had been moments when he would not even have valued her. But it was not so now; the scales had fallen from his eyes; he saw Rachel as she was, and his heart reached up, breathless, trying to climb to her heights, but always falling back, always despairing. Rachel, as he had grown to know her, was greater than his heart.
"I love you," he said steadily. "I haven't lived under the same roof with you for months without knowing you as you are. I'm quite aware that you despise me; possibly I deserve it. At any rate I expect no quarter; but it's fair that you should know how impossible it is for me to betray my promise to you when I've learned to love you."
"And you throw the blame on Eva?"
"I've nothing to say against her!"
They looked at each other. Rachel read the grim agony in the man's face; he had bitten the dust, he was speaking the truth, he loved her! The color rushed up to her hair, and she was suddenly conscious of the undissolved bonds between them, that she was actually his wife. And now there was an added, infrangible bond, a sort of complicity in his despair.
"I'm sorry," she said quite simply, and her lips trembled.
He made a slight, significant gesture which seemed to dismiss his part in it and, turning to the fireplace, rested his elbow on the mantel and leaned his head on his hand.
"I'm sorry to have done you an injustice," she went on, with an effort. "I believe what you've said, but I implore you to protect my sister."
"I'll do my best."
"Oh, if you'd only done your best at first!" she cried involuntarily.