“It would comfort me to hear you say it, could I believe you,” he answered grimly, and would have taken his leave of her on that but that she stayed him by her interjection.
“Why should you not believe me? Why should I be other than sincere in my desire to thank you?”
He looked at her at last, and in his eyes she saw some reflection of the pain he was suffering.
“Oh, I believe you sincere in that. You wish to thank me. It is natural, I suppose. You thank me; but you despise me. Your gratitude cannot temper your contempt. It is not possible.”
“Are you so sure?” she asked him gently, and her eyes were very piteous.
“Sure? What else can I be? What else is possible? Do I not loathe and despise myself? Am I so unconscious of my own infamy that I should befool myself into the thought that any part of it can escape you?”
“Don’t!” she said. “Ah, don’t!” But in the sorrow in her face he read no more than the confirmation of the very thing she was feebly attempting to deny.
“Is it worth while to close our eyes to a truth so self-evident?” he cried. “For years I sought you, Nan, a man without a stain upon his name, to find you at last in an hour in which I was so besmirched that I could not bear your eyes upon me. The very act that by a cruel irony of chance brought us together here at last was an act by which I touched the very bottom of the pit of infamy. Then—that dreadful night—you regarded me rightly with loathing. Now you regard me with pity because I am loathsome. Out of that pity, out of your charity, you fling me thanks that are not due, since what I have done was done in mitigation of my offence. What more is there to say? If this house were not locked, and I a prisoner here, I should have gone by now. I should have departed in that blessed moment that Beamish announced your danger at an end, taking care that our paths should never cross again, that I might never again offend you with the sight of my loathsomeness or the necessity to render thanks for benefits received from unclean hands, that you properly despise.”
“You think that sums all up?” she asked him, sadly incredulous. “It does not. It leaves still something to be said—indeed, a deal.”
“Spare it me,” he begged her passionately. “Out of that same charity that bids you thank me, spare me.” Then, more briskly, with a certain finality, he added: “If you have commands for me, madam, I shall be below until this house is reopened, and we can go our separate ways again.”