"Oh, God, what punishment is mine!" she sobbed.
She dropped her hands, clasped them, and looked wildly at me through her tears.
"If I am what I am, it was because I had lost you," she said. "I had eaten my heart out—you never came—I never thought you cared—I never thought you cared!" she wailed, twisting her interlocked fingers in helpless agony. "I had loved you so long; I tried to make you understand it, but you would not. I was mortally hurt—I said bitter things—but my heart was yours, Michael, yours for the asking, and so was I; you had only to take me; I would have gone with you from the first word you spoke to me in Johnson Hall—I would have followed you—from the first glance you gave me. Wrong? What is wrong? Love? It is never wrong! I would have died for a touch of your lips; I did almost die when you kissed me there, using me so shamelessly with your boyish cruelty! You went away in the night; I searched Johnstown, and I listened and questioned until I believed you had gone to Pittsburg. And I followed you, madly jealous of Felicity, crazed at the thought that she, too, was going to Pitt to be near you. But you were not at Fort Pitt; I waited, and I was calm because I believed that Felicity meant to wed with Dunmore. Then Harrod sent in his list of killed—my husband was among the dead. I went back to Albany. I meant to come to Boston to sell my house: I needed money. You found me there on the road that night; I could have died from happiness, but you would not understand me, Michael!" she ended, piteously.
I kept my eyes on the floor.
"And now, since you have been in Boston, all these long months," she cried, "I have not seen you; I could not find you, nor could I find anybody who had ever seen you. God knows I did not think to see you here since I, destitute, utterly desperate, caring nothing for life, took—this—shameful—step—"
She covered her hot face with her hands.
"Can you believe I love you still?" she sobbed.
I could endure no more; already I had stumbled through the flowery hedge towards the door, blindly forcing a path amid the blossoms which threw out a hundred tendrils to bar my way.
Once I looked back. She lay in the glittering chair, eyes following me. The next step, and a great bunch of roses blotted her face from my sight.
Through the card-room I hurried, aware of people around me, yet seeing nothing; down the stairway, jostled by people who were descending or mounting, and at last into the cloak-room and out through the court-yard, which was now bright with moonlight shining in the puddles of rain.