‘Colonel Woodruffe—I have a Past.’
‘So have all of us who are no longer boys or girls.’
‘It is only right that you should know the history of that Past.’
‘Such knowledge could in nowise influence me. It is with the present and the future only that I have to do.’
‘It is of the future that I am now thinking.’
‘Pardon me if I scarcely follow you.’
‘How shall I express to you what I wish to convey?’ She rose, crossed to the table, and taking up a book, began to turn its leaves carelessly over, evidently scarcely knowing what she was about. ‘If—if it so happened that I were to accede to your wishes,’ she said—‘if, in short, I were to become your wife—and at some future time, by some strange chance, some incident or fact connected with my past life, of which you knew nothing, and of which you had no previous suspicion, were to come to your knowledge, would you not have a right to complain that I had deceived you? that I had kept silence when I ought to have spoken? that—that’——
‘Mora—Mora, if this is all that stands between me and your love—between me and happiness, it is nothing—less than nothing! I vow to you’——
‘Stay!’ she said, coming a step or two nearer to him. ‘Do not think that I fail to appreciate your generosity or the chivalrous kindness which prompts you to speak as you do. But—I am thinking of myself as well as of you. If such a thing as I have spoken of were to happen, although your affection for me might be in nowise changed thereby, with what feelings should I afterwards regard myself? I should despise myself, and justly so, to the last day of my life.’
‘No—no! Believe me, you are fighting a shadow that has no substance behind it. I tell you again, and I will tell you so a hundred times, if need be, that with your Past I have nothing whatever to do. My heart tells me in accents not to be mistaken that you are a pure and noble-minded woman. What need a man care to know more?’