"Don't"—covering her ears with her hands—"don't tell me! I know you did it—because I—I—oh, why did you listen to me! I thought I knew what I was talking about," she went on, while he sought control of himself by looking away from her; "but I knew nothing of conditions; of men. I thought that a man—that you could accomplish anything you really wanted to do. But you were right. There are impossibilities. I understand now—now that it's too late. I have had my lesson. Only a few months ago you were honest, and now you are corrupt, and I alone am responsible!"
By the time she had finished speaking Murgatroyd had become as imperturbable as he had been at the trial, and there was only a hint of tenderness in the reassuring words that he now uttered.
"You must not blame yourself—" he was neither admitting nor denying the impeachment—"for anything I may have done."
"But I do, I do," she cried bitterly. "And you must blame me. I always thought Adam was a coward to cast the blame on Eve. But now my sympathies are with him—the woman was to blame then—I am to blame now. I gave you of the apple, and you—Oh, there would have been no apple—nothing but Eden if I had only listened to you and you had closed your ears to me."
"Eden," he said wistfully. "Yes, but hardly the Eden you cared for."
Abruptly her mood changed. She lost all semblance of calm, and her voice rang with a scorn that, before she ceased, seemed to include him as well as herself.
"What do I care for success or failure! I could cut my tongue out for telling you that my father was a failure. A failure! Why, I know that not only was he not a failure, but that he was really great! A man in the highest sense of the word—and that's all I want you to be. I don't care an iota that you should be a senator—I don't want you to be a senator. I have sent for you to-night to tell you so—to stop for good and all the thing I set in motion." She was silent for an instant; and then suddenly with a quick return to gentleness, and with appeal in her eyes, she murmured: "I want you to come back—come back."
In turn he murmured words that sounded to her like "to you."
Shirley shook her head as though that were a thing out of the question.
"No, to your honest self," she said earnestly but kindly. "To the Billy Murgatroyd that was."