His face was drawn with the conflict between an impossible hope and a desperate fear.
“That was the only time in my life that I ever broke my word, Jean, but breaking it to you made it impossible for you to believe in me. You told me so this morning, and I realized it. You forgive me that now,” he cried, with a sudden flash of intuition, “because you are afraid that in losing you, I shall lose myself again. Jean, though you are all there is in life for me, I will not let you sacrifice yourself to your splendid sympathy. Dearest, can’t you see that, as you said; if there were a shadow of doubt on your mind you could never be happy with me?”
“It was not what you think which made me say I did not trust you. It was something, Stephen, which I know would be impossible in the man you are now. I could not put your dishonesty to your guardian out of my mind, until I realized that that was no more a part of the Stephen Loring I know now than the faults which I had forgiven.”
Loring looked at her in amazement. “My dishonesty towards my guardian?” he exclaimed. “Jean, dear, what do you mean?”
“I was told,” she said sadly, “that you had borrowed heavily from him, and never returned the loan; but we can pay it back together,” she went on bravely.
“Jean, every cent that I ever borrowed, I paid him when I came into my own money. I don’t know or care where you heard the story, but the only part of it that is true is that I did abuse his good nature and ask him to advance me out of his own fortune the amount that he held in trust for me.” The impossible hope conquered the fear in his face. He seized both of her hands in his and spoke breathlessly.
“Jean, dearest, was that why you did not trust me?”
She looked up at him with her eyes glowing with a new feeling. The love that had sprung from pity had grown into the love based on pride.
“Do not let us talk of that now,” she whispered, “but of the present—and—and the future!”