“You are going away,” she said, half turning her face upon him. “I came here so that you could not go without seeing me. I could not bear to have you go away thinking I was such a heartless woman as you do, with no care or regret for all the trouble I’ve made you.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Gilbert; “I wasn’t thinking so much of you as of a man—excuse the egotism—who has a great deal more to answer for.”
“Oh no, no!”
“Sometime, when you tell Easton about it all, as you must, I want you to excuse me to him; no one else can. Tell him—tell him that all I had to urge in my own behalf was that I loved you.”
“No, no, no! You mustn’t speak to me in that way! It’s too dreadful.”
“Oh yes, it’s dreadful. But you can excuse it if he couldn’t. How could you excuse me if I didn’t love you? Why else should we be parting? I must have loved you from the first—before I knew. What else could have made me so bitter with poor Easton about what he told you? I knew he never meant me any harm; I knew he couldn’t; he was a man to have died for me. I was mad with jealousy. Did you mean it? You managed it well! But I loved you— What a fool I am! Don’t come any farther; in Heaven’s name go back! No,” he said, perceiving that she faltered in her steps, as if she were about to sink, “don’t stop—come on.” He had caught her hand, and now he drew it through his arm, and hurried forward. “Yes, come! I have something to ask you. I want you to tell me that since you have felt yourself bound to him, you have never—I want you to tell me that I was altogether in a delusion about you, and that you have done nothing to make me recreant to him.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” she moaned. “How pitiless you are! How hard, how hard you make it for me!” She released her hand and pressed it against his arm in the eagerness of her entreaty. “Leave me—do leave me—the poor hope that I have seemed worse than I was!”
He threw up his arm across his forehead and started a few paces onward.
She hastened after him. “And do believe,” she implored him, “that I only wanted to meet you to-night to say—to—to—somehow to make it easier for you to go. Indeed, indeed—Don’t leave me to despair!”
He halted, and confronted her. “Was that what you came for? I thought it might have been to see if you couldn’t make me say what I have just said; I fancied you might have wished to send me away beggared in everything that makes a man able to face the past and the future, and to meet the eyes of honest men. I deserved it. But I was mistaken, was I?” he asked, with a bitter derision. “Well, good-by!”