She listened, and soon, as I could see, no longer with shame. The hand I held returned the pressure of my own, and I felt the thrilling touch of the other on my brow and hair.
She spoke at last. ‘Listen, dear friend: now all must be said. It is too late to blame you for what has happened, or even to blame myself for letting it happen. It was to be. No human soul could be angry that knew how I tried, not even——’
I would not let her utter the name. ‘Never speak of him. What can he be to you? What fate does he deserve?’ but she laid her finger on my lips.
‘I know; my heart is yours, but only he shall release my hand.’
‘Victoria!’
‘Oh! listen, listen, and be still! I know all that must be said, and all that must be done.
‘When you first came, my heart was his, or I thought it was. I thought it had gone out with him into the world—your world, or the next one, they are both just as far away from us. I don’t know what I felt about you, except that I felt what was good and true and right. Was it wrong to like you? How can anyone help liking you that knows you? You spoke to me as no one had spoken to me before. You seemed to know all things. I only wanted to listen to you, and still be true to him. All my hope of myself was in being true. Our people do not always know what that sort of truth is. There are the two strains in our blood; we are English, and something else. It has shocked me, from my girlhood up, to see how we sometimes forget. We feel so quickly; and all our feeling is in each terrible moment as it flies. I set myself above our people; I shuddered to think I should ever be like that. My love was part of my respect for myself. Half our women have had their love tokens taken away in Queen’s ships, and have still lived on to be wives and mothers in the Isle. I could not, I would not be like that.
‘I did not blame then; I pitied! It is all so splendid when the Queen’s ships come. The young men in them seem to have dropped from the sky. It is like the book of the Heathen mythology, with the gods coming down.
‘When I saw you, I did not know it was to be like that. I felt sure of myself, and, if I had doubted, still I should have felt sure of you. Then slowly, slowly, slowly, came the dreadful change, though, if you had not spoken that day, I might never have known that it had come. When I did know, still it did not seem to be too late. My pride was strong: I did not know the strength of my weakness. I went there every day—to the thicket, and prayed to have him sent back to me. I tried to shut you quite out from my heart, but still to keep you in my soul. You were so good; you made me think I had done it. You tried to make me think so; I knew you tried; and your very goodness only made it worse and worse.
‘Then, I felt I was no longer sure of myself. I tried to keep away from you; but, to have you near me, and not to see you, not to speak to you, made all the world seem dead and cold. So, I always came back to find you again, of my own accord, wanting to keep all my happiness, when I ought to have chosen which part of it I should give up.’