“John, dear, let me tell you what is in my heart,” she began tremulously. “I don’t think that I am the same woman that you married, for I feel——Forgive me if I say a lot about myself, for that is the only way in which I can make you understand. When we married, I did not care for you, I’m not sure if I even liked you, for at times you made me afraid. However, I was watching you and learning. But I was blind and selfish until baby came, and it was not till then that I began to understand something of what life can contain.”
John Gaunt scarcely dared to breathe as he listened. He knew how deeply she must be moved to reveal herself so openly to him.
“Since baby came it has been a gradual awakening. Even when I asked you to take me away on the yacht, I did not fully understand. I only knew that my feelings towards you had changed, and that you occupied my thoughts almost entirely.”
As she continued her voice took a deeper tone, and her eyes were not removed from his, so that he could see their changing expression and gathering passion.
“And then you refused to go away with me, and I was deeply hurt, for I naturally thought that you did not want me. I even feared that I had lost your love, and it was agony—agony.”
He could feel the trembling of her arms, and he longed to clasp her to him. But dare he do so, with his past unconfessed? He had decided that he would not again seek her love until he could go to her with clean hands, and yet———
“But soon it was revealed to me that the world was nothing. If you have sinned in the past, if you fear that people will make charges against you, that could not affect you and me, John.” Her voice was tremulous, and there was a wild appeal in her eyes.
“John, it is difficult to say the words, but I love you, body and soul, even as I believe that you love me.”
She rose to her feet and looked down at him with an air of pride in this declaration of her love.
“All petty considerations have vanished. I make no conditions. I ask no favor of you, save that you shall love me.”