“Yes, Gabriel.”
“I have been an utter fool. Oh, my God, how can I ask your pardon!”
She sat and gazed at him as in a kind of stupor, the sunlight pouring through upon her face and making it wondrous white in the shadows.
“What is it, Gabriel?” she said.
“Like a blind fool I have been leading you to the edge of a cliff.”
“I do not understand you, dear.”
He stopped before her with a great gesture of despair and the morose look of a man denouncing his own crime. He spoke hurriedly, as though eager to end the confession, and as though each word he spoke would wound.
“Understand that it was wrong of me to have come into your life again. I have been a dreamer, and have forgotten that the world is a mass of malice and of falsehood. Like a fool I have brought peril into your life. Now I am learning, for your sake, to fear the world.”
She started up suddenly, and came towards him very white and piteous. He had never seen fear on her face before.
“Gabriel!”