第28章

"There is only one thing I could say," he murmured, looking hopelessly into her eyes, "and that's of no use."

She turned her head away. Her tragedy had fallen to nothing; or rather it had never been. All her remorse, all her suffering, was mere farce now; but his guilt in the matter was the greater. A fierce resentment burned in her heart; she longed to make him feel something of the anguish she had needlessly undergone.

He sat watching her averted face. "Miss Breen," he said huskily, "will you let me speak to you?"

"Oh, you have me in your power," she answered cruelly. "Say what you like."

He did not speak, nor make any motion to do so.

A foolish, idle curiosity to know what, after all that had happened, he could possibly have to say, stirred within her, but she disdainfully stifled it. They were both so still that a company of seals found it safe to put their heads above water, and approach near enough to examine her with their round soft eyes. She turned from the silly things in contempt that they should even have interested her. She felt that from time to time her companion lifted an anxious glance to the dull heavens.

At last the limp sail faintly stirred; it flapped; it filled shallowly; the boat moved. The sail seemed to have had a prescience of the wind before it passed over the smooth water like a shadow.

When a woman says she never will forgive a man, she always has a condition of forgiveness in her heart. Now that the wind had risen again, "I have no right to forbid you to speak," she said, as if no silence had elapsed, and she turned round and quietly confronted him; she no longer felt so impatient to escape.

He did not meet her eye at once, and he seemed in no haste to avail himself of the leave granted him. A heavy sadness blotted the gayety of a face whose sunny sympathy had been her only cheer for many days. She fancied a bewilderment in its hopelessness which smote her with still sharper pathos. "Of course," she said, "I appreciate your wish to do what I wanted, about Mrs. Maynard. I remember my telling you that she ought n't to go out, that day. But that was not the way to do it"--"There was no other," he said.

"No," she assented, upon reflection. "Then it ought n't to have been done."

He showed no sign of intending to continue, and after a moment of restlessness, she began again.

"If I have been rude or hasty in refusing to hear you, Mr. Libby, I am very wrong. I must hear anything you have to say."

"Oh, not unless you wish."

"I wish whatever you wish."

"I'm not sure that I wish that now. I have thought it over; I should only distress you for nothing. You are letting me say why sentence shouldn't be passed upon me. Sentence is going to be passed any way.

I should only repeat what I have said. You would pity me, but you couldn't help me. And that would give you pain for nothing. No, it would be useless."

"It would be useless to talk to me about--loving." She took the word on her lips with a certain effect of adopting it for convenience' sake in her vocabulary. "All that was ended for me long ago,--ten years ago.

And my whole life since then has been shaped to do without it. I will tell you my story if you like. Perhaps it's your due. I wish to be just. You may have a right to know."

"No, I haven't. But.--perhaps I ought to say that Mrs. Maynard told me something."

"Well, I am glad of that, though she had no right to do it. Then you can understand."

"Oh, yes, I can understand. I don't pretend that I had any reason in it."

He forbore again to urge any plea for himself, and once more she was obliged to interfere in his behalf. "Mr. Libby, I have never confessed that I once wronged you in a way that I'm very sorry for."

"About Mrs. Maynard? Yes, I know. I won't try to whitewash myself; but it didn't occur to me how it would look. I wanted to talk with her about you."

"You ought to have considered her, though," she said gently.

"She ought to have considered herself," he retorted, with his unfailing bitterness for Mrs. Maynard. "But it doesn't matter whose fault it was.

I'm sufficiently punished; for I know that it injured me with you."

"It did at first. But now I can see that I was wrong. I wished to tell you that. It isn't creditable to me that I thought you intended to flirt with her. If I had been better myself"--"You!" He could not say more.