“Very good. Can you, by any stretch of the imagination, fancy Mrs. Randall, being as she is, ever living happily in an atmosphere so different from that she has known, which time and circumstance have made her own? Can you?”
“No.” The voice was low again, very low. “In my sane moments, never.”
Roberts waited deliberately, until the pause added emphasis; with equal deliberation he drove the wedge home.
“And still, in the fulness of this knowledge, you contracted by implication to deliver to her this same thing—happiness,” he said.
A second Harry Randall waited, then unconsciously he passed his hand across his face. 208
“Yes,” he echoed, “in the fulness of knowledge I did it. I loved her.”
“Loved? And yet you sacrificed her! And on top of that again labelled her rebellion unjustified!” He was silent.
Again Harry Randall’s hand passed across his face, and this time it came back damp.
“God, you’re hard on me!” he said. “I deserve it, though, and more. She was ignorant absolutely of what it meant to count pennies and deny herself. She couldn’t realize, couldn’t!”
Roberts said nothing. The leaven was working.