He took a step toward her, but a swift gesture of her hand held him back. “No—no! You can’t trust me. That’s all there is to it—except that you’re guilty. I’d never have believed it—never in the world—not even after what I know of you.”
Rowan longed to cry out to her to have faith in him. He wanted desperately to bridge the gulf that was growing wider between them, to have her see that he had closed the door behind him and must follow the course he had chosen. But he was dumb. It was not in him to express his feeling in words.
Into the delicate white of her cheeks excitement had brought a stain of pink. Eagerly she poured out her passionate protest:
“You don’t mean me to think—surely you can’t mean—that—that—you did this horrible thing! You couldn’t have done it! The thing isn’t possible. Tell me you had nothing to do with it.”
He felt himself trapped in a horrible ambuscade. He would not lie to her. He could not tell the truth. If she would only have faith in him——
But there was no chance of that. To look at the hostile, accusing gaze of this girl was to know that he had lost her. She had demanded of him a confidence that was not his to give, a pledge of innocence he could not make.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Her affronted eyes stabbed him. “That’s all you have to tell me?”
“If you only knew.”
The dumb appeal of him might have moved her, but it did not. She was too full of her wrongs.