“Yes.”
“You must go back to him, some day?”
“Never.”
“Ah, Bernoline, why—why didn’t you tell me?”
She waited a moment.
“It is not my secret alone. It is terrible that I cannot tell you any more than that. Yes, yes, I have done wrong: I have been weak. But don’t you reproach me, David; that would break my heart!”
“Oh, no, I don’t reproach you!” I blurted out. “I don’t know your reasons. I know if you’ve done what you’ve done, there is a reason, and—it will always be right. Never, dear, could I have any other feeling towards you but of reverence for the loveliest and purest thing I have known.”
“You can still think so, David?” she cried with a little sob.
“Always. Nothing that you or I can do will ever change that—and nothing that has gone before.”
She looked up at me so swiftly, with her sad, sweet smile, that before I knew it she was in my arms, trembling against my heart, her head buried against my shoulder. I knew nothing more, what I did or said, only this: that we were united—that this soft, gentle body in my arms was the woman who, whatever intervened, loved me now and irrevocably.