“What does it mean?” she asked, refusing to believe the discovery which the expression of his averted face confirmed.
“That I am a living lie. He wrote that book.”
“But not the other?” she said; clinging to a last hope, as every thing seemed falling about her.
Down dropped the book between them,—now a thing of little worth,—and, trying to conceal from him the contempt which even love could not repress, Gladys hid her face, with one reproach, the bitterest she could have uttered,—
“O my husband! did you give up honor, liberty, and peace for so poor a thing as that?”
It cut him to the soul: for now he saw how high a price he had paid for an empty name; how mean and poor his ambition looked; how truly he deserved to be despised for that of which he had striven to be proud. Gladys had so rejoiced over him as a poet, that it was the hardest task of all to put off his borrowed singing-robes, and show himself an ordinary man. He forgot that there was any other tribunal than this, as he stood waiting for his sentence, oppressed with the fear that out of her almost stern sense of honor she might condemn him to the loss of the respect and confidence which he had lately learned to value as much as happiness and love.
“You must despise me; but if you knew”—he humbly began, unable to bear the silence longer.
“Tell me, then. I will not judge until I know;” and Gladys, just, even in her sorrow, looked up with an expression which said plainer than words, “For better, for worse; this is the worse, but I love you still.”
That made it possible for him to go on, fast and low, not stopping to choose phrases, but pouring out the little story of his temptation and fall, with a sense of intense relief that he was done with slavery for ever.
“Neither of us coolly planned this thing; it came about so simply and naturally, it seemed a mere accident.—And yet, who can tell what _he_ might have planned, seeing how weak I was, how ready to be tempted.—It happened in that second month, when I promised to stay; he to help me with my book. It was _all_ mine then; but when we came to look at it, there was not enough to fill even the most modest volume; for I had burnt many, and must recall them, or write more. I tried honestly, but the power was not in me, and I fell into despair again; for the desire to be known was the breath of my life.”