Disengaging himself gently, he crossed the room to his desk, and placed his hand upon some papers scattered there, with the ink fresh upon them.
‘When I heard you knock,’ he said, ‘I was trying to write down, for your eyes to read, what my lips refused to tell, what I could not speak for utter, overpowering shame. I knew the secret must soon be known; I wished to be first to reveal it to you, that you might know the whole unvarnished truth. I was too late, I find. My enemies have been before me, and you have come to reproach me—as I deserve.’
‘I have not come for that,’ answered Alma, sobbing. ‘It is too late for reproaches. I only wish to know my fate.’
‘Then try and listen, while I tell you everything,’ said Bradley, in the same tone of utter misery and despair. ‘I am speaking my own death-warrant, I know; for with every word I utter I shall be tearing away another living link that binds you to my already broken heart. I have nothing to say in my own justification; no, not one word. If you could strike me dead at your feet, in your just and holy anger, it would be dealing with me as I deserve. I should have been strong; I was weak, a coward! I deserve neither mercy nor pity.’
It was strange how calm they both seemed; he as he addressed her in his low deep voice, she as she stood and listened. Both were deathly pale, but Alma’s tears were checked, as she looked in despair upon the man who had wrecked her life.
Then he told her the whole story: of how, in his youthful infatuation, he had married Mary Goodwin, how they had lived a wretched life together, how she had fled from him, and how for many a year he had thought her dead. His face trembled and his cheek flushed as he spoke of the new life that had dawned upon him, when long afterwards he became acquainted with herself; while she listened in agony, thinking of the pollution of that other woman’s embraces from which he had passed.
But presently she hearkened more peacefully, and a faint dim hope began to quicken in her soul—for as yet she but dimly apprehended Bradley’s situation. So far as she had heard, the man was comparatively blameless. The episode of his youth was a repulsive one, but the record of his manhood was clear. He had believed the woman dead, he had had every reason to believe it, and he had been, to all intents and purposes, free.
As he ceased, he heaved a sigh of deep relief, and her tears flowed more freely. She moved across the room, and took his hand.
‘I understand now,’ she said. ‘O Ambrose, why did you not confide in me from the first? There should have been no secrets between us.
I would freely have forgiven you.... And I forgive you now! When you married me, you believed the woman dead and in her grave. If she has arisen to part us so cruelly, the blame is not yours—thank God for that!’