"No!" he cried. "I have come to fulfil my promise—to atone, if atonement can be made!"
"Do you call your belated charity atonement? Twenty-five years ago, I saved you from death—or worse. One of us had to be burned, and it was I, instead of you. I chose it, not deliberately, but instinctively, because I loved you. When you came to the hospital, after three days——"
"I was ill," he interrupted. "The gas——"
"You were told," she went on, her voice dominating his, "that I had been so badly burned that I would be disfigured for life. That was enough for you. You never asked to see me, never tried in any way to help me, never sent by a messenger a word of thanks for your cowardly life, never even waited to be sure it was not a mistake. You simply went away."
"There was no mistake," he muttered, helplessly. "I made sure."
He turned his eyes away from her miserably. Through his mind came detached fragments of speech. The honour of the spoken word still holds him . . . Father always does the square thing . . .
"I am asking you," said Anthony Dexter, "to be my wife. I am offering you the fulfilment of the promise I made so long ago. I am asking you to marry me, to live with me, to be a mother to my son."
"Yes," repeated Evelina, "you ask me to marry you. Would you have a scarred and disfigured wife? A man usually chooses a beautiful woman, or one he thinks beautiful, to sit at the head of his table, manage his house, take the place of a servant when it is necessary, accept gladly what money he chooses to give her, and bear and rear his children. Poor thing that I am, you offer me this. In return, I offer you release. I gave you your life once, I give you freedom now. Take your last look at the woman who would not marry you to save you from—hell!"
The man started forward, his face ashen, for she had raised her veil, and was standing full in the light.
In the tense silence he gazed at her, fascinated. Every emotion that possessed him was written plainly on his face for her to read. "The night of realisation," she was saying, "turned my hair white. Since I left the hospital, no human being has seen my face till now. I think you understand—why?"