“I wouldn’t ask her to share it.”
“Oh, very fine! you think your brave words will make a brave affair of a cowardly, sneaking treason!”
“Susan!”
“William! These people who are beginning to talk you over do not know what I know. They see that you are beginning to be fascinated with her, as he was. They don’t know that you have believed her false and shallow from the first, and that if you have any hopes of her love now, they are in your belief that after all that has happened she is still too false and shallow to be true to him. He was taken with what was best in her, with all that he believed was good. But you have dared to love her in the hope that she had no principles and no heart. You are ready to lay your honor at her feet, to give all that makes life worth having for what would make your whole life a sorrow and a shame. If you could commit this crime against Easton and yourself and her, if you could win the heart you think so empty and so fickle, what would you do with it? If you could make her false enough to love you, how could you ever have peace again? How could you ever meet each other’s eyes without seeing the memory of your common falsehood in them? Think— Oh, my dear, dear boy, forgive me! I know that it isn’t your fault; I take it all back, all that I have said against you; I don’t blame you for loving her—how could you help it? She is charming—yes, she charms me, too; and to a man she must make all other women seem so blank and poor and plain! But now you mustn’t love her: she cannot be yours without a wrong that when you’re away from her you must shudder at. And—and—you will go, won’t you, William?”
Gilbert’s arm dropped from the mantel where it lay, to his side. “I will go,” he said, sullenly. “But I acknowledge nothing of all that you have chosen to attribute to me, motive or fact. And you must be aware that you have said things to me that are not to be forgiven.”
He turned to go out of the room, without looking at her, but she cried after him: “Never mind forgiving me, my dear. Only go now, in time to forgive yourself, and I will gladly let you hate me all your life. Good-by, good-by; God bless you and keep you!”
He did not answer, nor turn about, but closed the door behind him and left her standing with her hands clenched, in the gesture of her final appeal. She sank into her chair, spent by the victory she had won.
Gilbert went to the room which he had been occupying since his constant attendance upon Easton had ceased to be necessary, and began to gather together the things scattered about the room. It was a great and bewildering labor, but he had succeeded in heaping many of them into his valise when Rachel Woodward appeared with his lighted lamp. Then he knew that he had been working in the dark. “Oh, thank you, thank you,” he said, in a strange voice of unconscious, formal politeness. “I—I was just going away, and it’s rather difficult getting these things together without a light.”
“You are going away?” she asked.
“Yes; I had a letter this morning recalling me to New York, but I hadn’t made up my mind to go until just now. I’m going to try to catch the express; I’ll get a man to drive me over from the hotel, and I’ll send him back from there for this bag.”