“You are mistaken,” she said quietly. “You left, Hugh, without a word—without telling me good-bye. There was nothing left to do but to send you your ring.”
“We won’t quarrel again, now, Jennie. I have come back to you to tell you—”
She had been looking closely in his face, and her heart beat wildly. She had seen it all—the bravado way, the flushed recklessness, the sign everywhere of dissipation, of modesty gone, of truth, of the old manhood.
“Not that,” she said, quickly interrupting him, “but of yourself. Tell me where you have been and—and what doing.”
He laughed coldly.
“Well, after we split up I went West, then to the Klondike. But it was a nasty life. As I said, I have made nothing, and I hoped all the time to make a fortune and bring it back to you, Jennie.”
“Was it true—that I heard—the trouble?”
“Why, yes, I did get to drinking too much, and got into trouble—but the papers had it overdrawn. I returned him his money. Now I have come back to you—to tell you I still—”
“You need not tell it,” she said quickly. “You could tell nothing I would believe now. You are not the man you were before you left, and never will be. Then you were weak, but honest and sober. Now you are weak, but dishonest and a drinker. And you must not come in—no—no—you are not the Hugh I once knew and loved.”
She sobbed in a quick way as she said it, but went on quietly: