She clung to him, weeping. “Oh, that I might!” she whispered. “If I might go back and see with the clearer eyes I have now; if I might know what I know now and make atonement!”
“The time must come when we all cry that, child,” he said. “The time must surely come when the bravest and the best of us would be glad if we might begin again, seeing the way before us with clearer eyes. Listen: are you strong enough lying here in your old friend’s arms—are you strong enough to hear what I shall say to you?”
She looked up at him wonderingly and grasped his hand more closely, but he dared not look at her.
“There was a man whom you loved, a man you called husband—ah, don’t shudder; don’t weep like that, or you’ll break my heart, child! Because you loved him he holds a better place in my thoughts than he could ever otherwise have done; because you loved him I must bear him kindly in my remembrance.”
“Oh, if I might atone, if I might atone!” she whispered, and hid her face again.
The captain did not understand; he went on in the same gentle tones: “There comes a time for every man and every woman when all blame and all praise are as nothing to them, and pass them over; when their little lives fade out and are judged by the standard of something we do not understand; a time when they pass beyond our censure and we can afford to think lightly of their mistakes. ’Linda, do you understand?”
She looked up at him; her brows wrinkled a little as she watched his face, but she did not speak.
“He left you without thinking what might happen, careless of what sorrow the world held for you. But you can afford to forgive that now; in time you may even learn to forget it. Your prayers or your tears can not reach him any more.”
“I understand,” she whispered. “You mean that he—he is dead?”
“Yes. He is dead. He died quite suddenly and painlessly.”