“I took what wouldn't have touched a man that was in the habit of it.”
“Poor Bartley!”
“And the first thing I knew I had got too much. I was drunk,—wild drunk,” he said with magnanimous frankness.
She had been listening intensely, exculpating him at every point, and now his innocence all flashed upon her. “I see! I see!” she cried. “And it was because you had never tasted it before—”
“Well, I had tasted it once or twice,” interrupted Bartley, with heroic veracity.
“No matter! It was because you had never more than hardly tasted it that a very little overcame you in an instant. I see!” she repeated, contemplating him in her ecstasy, as the one habitually sober man in a Boston full of inebriates. “And now I shall never regret it; I shall never care for it; I never shall think about it again! Or, yes! I shall always remember it, because it shows—because it proves that you are always strictly temperance. It was worth happening for that. I am glad it happened!”
She rose from his side, and took her sewing nearer the lamp, and resumed her work upon it with shining eyes.
Bartley remained in his place on the sofa, feeling, and perhaps looking, rather sheepish. He had made a clean breast of it, and the confession had redounded only too much to his credit. To do him justice, he had not intended to bring the affair to quite such a triumphant conclusion; and perhaps something better than his sense of humor was also touched when he found himself not only exonerated, but transformed into an exemplar of abstinence.
“Well,” he said, “it isn't exactly a thing to be glad of, but it certainly isn't a thing to worry yourself about. You know the worst of it, and you know the best of it. It never happened before, and it never shall happen again; that's all. Don't lament over it, don't accuse yourself; just let it go, and we'll both see what we can do after this in the way of behaving better.”
He rose from the sofa, and began to walk about the room.