Memory surged up in Adam, moving him to speak aloud his own deeply hidden secret, by the revelation of which he might share the shame and remorse and agony of Magdalene Virey.
“I will tell you my story,” he said, and the words were as cruel blades at the closed portals of his heart. Huskily he began, halting often, breathing hard, while the clammy sweat beaded upon his brow. What was this life—these years that deceived with forgetfulness? His trouble was there as keen as on the day it culminated. He told Magdalene of his boyhood, of his love for his brother Guerd, and of their life in the old home, where all, even friendships of the girls, was for Guerd and nothing for him. As he progressed, Magdalene Virey’s own agony was forgotten. The quiver of her body changed to strung intensity, the heaving of her bosom was no longer the long-drawn breath to relieve oppression. Remorselessly as she had bared her great secret, Adam confessed his little, tawdry, miserable romance—his wild response to the lure of a vain Mexican girl, and his fall, and the words that had disillusioned him.
“Ah, so long ago and far away!” echoed Magdalene Virey, all the richness of her wonderful voice gathering in a might of woman’s fury. “Oh, such a thing for a girl to say!... And Adam—she, this Margarita, was the only woman you ever loved—ever knew that way?”
“Yes.”
“And she was the cause of your ruin?”
“Indeed she was, poor child!”
“The damned hussy!” cried Magdalene, passionately. “And you—only eighteen years old? How I hate her!... And what of the man who won her fickle heart?”
Adam bowed as a tree in a storm. “He—he was my brother.”
“Oh no!” she burst out. “The boy you loved—the brother! Oh, it can’t be true!”
“It was true.... And, Magdalene—I killed him.”