"Very--where it concerns you," she said, unsmiling.
"Dear--I had better tell you now; you may hear things about me----"
"No; but one sometimes hears without listening. People may say things. They _will_ say things. I wish I could spare you. If I had known--if I had only known--that you were in the world----"
"Don't, Jim! It--it isn't best for me to hear. It doesn't concern me," she insisted excitedly. "And if anybody dares say one word to me----"
"Wait, dear. All I want to be sure of is that you _do_ love me enough to--to go on loving me. I want to be certain, and I want you to be certain before you are a bride----"
She was growing very much excited, and suddenly near to tears, for the one thing that endangered her self-control seemed to be his doubt of her.
"There is nothing that I haven't forgiven you," she said. "Nothing! There is nothing I won't forgive--except--one thing----"
"I can't say it. I can't even think it. All I know is that _now_ I couldn't forgive it." Suddenly she became perfectly quiet.
"Yes. It is what no wife can forgive." She looked at him, clear eyed, intelligent, calm; for the moment without any illusion; and he seemed to feel that, in the light of what she knew of him, she was coolly weighing the danger of the experiment. Never had he seen so cold and lustrous a brow, such limpid clarity of eye, searching, fearless, direct. Then, in an instant, it all seemed to melt into flushed and winsome loveliness; and she was murmuring that she loved him, and asking pardon for even one second's hesitation.
"It never could be; it is unthinkable," she whispered. "And it is too late anyway for me--I would love you now, whatever you killed in me. Because I must go on loving you, Jim; for that is the way it is with me, and I know it now. As long as there is life in me I'll strive for you in my own fashion--even against yourself--to keep you for mine, to please you, to be to you and to the world what you wish me to be--for your honour and your happiness--which also must be my own--the only happiness, now, that I can ever understand."
He held her in his arms, smoothing the bright hair, touching the white brow with his lips at moments, happy because he was so deeply in love, fearful because of it--and, deep in his soul, miserable, afraid lest aught out of his past life return again to mock her--lest some echo of folly offend her ears--some shadow fall--some phantom of dead days rise from their future hearth to stand between them.