“It is mine because it is his,” she said, with a return of her wonderful self-control. “But no one shall ever hear of it from me—no—Jerry—not—even you.”
“He offered to show me that message,” I said. “I refused to see.”
Another little cry issued from her compressed lips.
“You were willing not to know?”
“Yes.”
She went into a corner; without taking her eyes away from mine, she wrung her hands, again and again.
“Why did I ever see you?” she whispered. “Why did I ever love you? Oh, go, while I am strong! Go, while I know that you must never ask for me again! Go, before I bargain with my conscience.”
“You cannot send me away,” I said. A thousand hidden horrors would not have daunted me then. “Will you treat my love for you so? Has your own gone so quickly?”
She shuddered then as if cold steel had been run through her body.
“I am lost,” cried she. “I am lost. I cannot do more. Promise by your love of me,—by your love of God,—never to ask me of those things now ashes on the hearth—never to so much as speak of them to me—till eternity.”