"Is not the strong man the one who has found in what his weakness lies?" John pleaded humbly.
But as before, his attempt at palliation seemed to anger her unaccountably, and she turned away again with feelings too intense for utterance—with, in fact, a dismal sense of the futility of utterance. She wanted to get away from John. She wished he would not stand there barring the door. She wished he would go while her back was turned. A sense of humiliation greater than had possessed him, she was sure, had come over her. If the lake in front had been sixty feet deep instead of six inches, she might have flung herself into it.
"But you love me!" pleaded John from behind her, his voice coming up out of depths.
"Do you think I would care how many actresses you lost your dizzy head over if I didn't?" retorted Bessie petulantly, and instantly would have given several worlds to recall the speech.
"No! No!" she continued, stamping her foot angrily, "I don't love you, I love the man I thought you were."
"All the same, I love you," groaned John, rising up to proclaim his passion hoarsely and then flinging himself again upon the bench, where with head hanging despondently, he continued: "I love you, and I don't blame you for hating me, and you can punish me as long as you want and in any way you want. You can even try to fall in love with some one else if you like. Marry him if you want to. I love you, and I'll keep on loving you. No punishment is too great for the thing I've done."
The effect of this speech on the outraged Bessie was rather alarming to that indignant young lady. When John began to heap the reproaches higher upon himself, she felt a return to sympathetic consideration for him that was so great she dared not trust herself to hear more of them.
"Take me home!" she commanded hurriedly, walking swiftly by him, but with scrupulous care that the swish of her white skirts should not touch the bowed head as she passed, and no more trusting herself to a second glance at that dejected tawny mop of hair than to hear more of his self-indictment.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HOUSE DIVIDED