“Yes, yes,” she said—“oh yes!”
“And I am not wholly living under false colors,” he went on, anxiously. “I have confessed the worst to my employer, and he is doing all he can to help me. He trusts me. I don't like to say these things in my own behalf, and yet surely you will forgive me for saying that I am, at least, not living as I used to live.”
“You intend to make—make reparation?” she said, raising an awful glance to his face.
“Of course. I have sent back all my savings so far—every dollar I could get together; and before another year is past I hope to send enough, at least, to—”
“Money!” she cried, almost in a tone of disgust—and as she spoke she had a picture of a golden-haired child with a sunny face playing on the lawn at her home—“money! As if that would count in a matter like—like that!”
“It is all I can do now, Margaret!” he exclaimed, as he shrank under the unexpected severity of her words.
“I presume so,” she answered, coldly, even sternly, and she fixed an unreadable stare on his blighted face; “and yet if you could be back at home, and see what I have seen, perhaps you'd realize that there are things mere money cannot restore. I can't blame you wholly—to save my life, I can't! The temptation was deliberately put in your track; you were not born with the power to resist, and so you fell like many another man has fallen, but you ought to have stayed on at Stafford and done your duty—your full duty!”
“I couldn't! I assure you, I couldn't, Margaret!” he went on, almost piteously, his lips quivering under stress of the vast emotion let loose within him. “My father would have punished me by law—would have deprived me of every chance to atone in the way that I am now trying to atone. But I have no right to talk to you this way. I am breaking my promise to Wynn. By my own act, I have banished myself from you forever.”
“Yes, forever!” she admitted, as her proud head went down. “There is nothing either of us can do. We must try not to meet again, even by accident. I must join Mrs. Marston now. I hear her in the corridor. You are very pale, and she might wonder and imagine all sorts of things. I'd have to introduce you, and I can't even remember your—your new name. I will tell no one at home that I have seen you. You may trust that to me. Your secret is safe. I can't recall the name of the place you live in. I sha'n't try. I never have believed it was all your fault—that is, not all. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” he repeated, huskily; and he saw her rise, and, without extending her hand, or giving him another glance, she moved unsteadily toward the door.