Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of shooting—taking a human life—murder—as though it were no more than a snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he knew he had never loved that little teacher as he loved Katrine, that she could never rouse him as this woman did whom he believed to be an epitome of evil, who, as she lay now in the firelight by his feet, reminded him of the emblem of sin that crept into man's Eden. Yet it was a pleasure—what pleasure to be near her, to touch that smooth skin! But what was this pleasure?—was it also evil? What was this passion? His thoughts flew onward feverishly, and then Katrine's voice struck across them and brought him back to outer consciousness again.
"Listen," she was saying, "while I tell you all, and then we can start afresh, as you say."
Stephen put his hand over his eyes, and waited in silence. He dreaded unspeakably what he thought he was going to hear, and with a man's moral cowardice would have deferred her confession, slurred over and tried to forget her wrong-doing, rather than hear and forgive it. They had changed places since he had asked her that morning in his cabin to confide in him.
"Well, to begin with," went on her clear, soft voice, "I drink—I like drinking. You think it wrong to drink anything but water; I like wine and spirits, anything that excites me, and I can drink with any man in town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble," Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love excitement, I love the winning and raking in the gold dust. I spend all my nights playing; it's what I live for in this awful place."
There was silence, then Katrine's voice broke it again—
"Now you think that so wicked, I bet you don't want to marry me now."
There was a half laugh with a sad ring in it as she looked up to his covered face. Now Stephen heard, but the words fell on his ears dully; he was waiting in strained painful tension for what was to come. It was true he loathed gambling as a hated vice, and but for the apprehension that gripped his mind her confession so far would have been horrible to him. Still it was as a Christian that he abhorred these things. What he expected to hear he would have abhorred as a man and a lover; and the former abhorrence is considerably milder than the latter.
"Go on," he said at last, in a stifled voice.
"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.
She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent over, clasping his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing, and drew her up to him.