But though they thus skirted round and round one dread remembrance which was--how could it help being?--in both their minds, each shrank from approaching a subject avoided by the other; until at length Leonore, tremulous but resolute, realised that it was for her, not him, to speak.
"Paul, dear Paul, I don't want to leave _anything_ unsaid. Paul, on that worst day of all," she hesitated, and his hand pressed the little hand within it. "Dear Paul," she whispered, "I did not know what I was doing; indeed, indeed I did not. Something in my head seemed to have snapped, and I felt so strange--I never felt like it before. And it was not only about you that I was so unutterably wretched, there was--there was--something else."
"A man told me the day before that I had broken his heart,--oh, Paul, don't start. He was not a man I could ever have given a thought to. He was not one I should ever have spoken to--in that way. Only our village doctor's assistant, and the rest of us hardly knew that he existed,--but I, I was so unhappy, even before you came to Boldero, that I let myself go,--that is, I let the poor silly creature run up a kind of friendship with me. That was all, Paul; truthfully it was--on my part. I amused myself with him--a little; and then--and then----"
"It had no right to be," said Leo, with dignity. "It never went any length; we only just met each other once or twice, and----"
"Not even that. I let him adore," she laughed, but shamefacedly--"and he mistook."
"Paul, dear, I am not excusing myself; only I do not think, I do not think that wretched Tommy Andrews ought ever to have presumed--it was frightful, it was untrue what he said. I did _not_ break his disgusting heart----"
"But he made me think I had. He accused me of it, and I was in such a state at the time that I believed him, and it drove me wild. It was the last straw, the finishing touch. I seemed not only to have made a mess of my own poor life, but of another's--and while I was very angry and contemptuous, I was enraged with myself for being so. I stormed and raved when I was alone, and vowed to end it all,--but I know now that I--Sue says I was not accountable, Paul,--" wistfully.
"Sue is right, dearest. Your nerves were altogether unstrung. You were overstrained and off your balance for the time being."