it; but I can’t bear the feeling of holding anything back from you.”
An answering gravity came into the girl’s face, but she smiled.
“Tell me anything; I am not afraid to hear!”
Her innocent pride gave him a moment of sharp discomfort. Curiously enough, what he had to tell her had not connected itself, in his mind, with personal embarrassment; it had been too remote from himself. He found himself hesitating for a word, and grasping after that indifference to all but Love which he had felt but a moment before.
“Perhaps I am a fool to tell you,” he began; “it may make you unhappy, and”—
A startled look came into Amy’s eyes; then the color flooded up into her face. She lifted her head with a beautiful, imperious gesture, and stopped him with a word.
“I—understand. Don’t tell me. I—understand.” She bit her lip as she spoke, and her eyelids quivered as though the tears had risen suddenly.
“You understand?” he repeated, in a puzzled voice; “do you mean you don’t want me to tell you?”
“William,” she said, in a low voice, “I do not think a woman has any business with a good man’s life in the past; if—he was not good. I am not a young girl. I am old enough to know that a man’s life and a girl’s life are—different; but don’t tell me. I—love you. Don’t tell me.” She trembled as she spoke, and then her eyes sought his, filled with love and grief.
A wave of tenderness made his whole face melt and quiver. He murmured something of his undesert of such love as this:—
“You are not like other women,” he told her, as every lover has told his mistress since the sun first shone on lovers. “That sin, the mean woman does not forgive. And yet it is so much more pardonable than some other sins! More pardonable, dear, than what I want to tell you.”
She drew a quick breath and smiled. “Ah,” she said, “I’m glad it is not that!” Her relief was so apparent that he realized how austerely sweet her face had been as she forgave him.
“Go on and tell me,” she said; “I am not afraid to hear anything now.”
“That would have been the hardest thing to forgive?” he asked her. She flashed a look of pride at him.
“The things I could not forgive, you could not do!”
This made him glow. After all, who would not confess anything, to be met by such confident love as this?
“This happened long ago, Amy; when I was nineteen. I forged a check for five hundred dollars.”
“Forged!” Her lips fell apart; she sat staring at him.
He was holding her hand, lifting it to his lips sometimes, and looking at it as it lay in his. He went on, quietly:—
“It was when I was at college; I needed money; and—poor, desperate, wicked, silly young man—I forged Professor Wilson’s name. I don’t know what I supposed would become of me when it was found out. And I don’t know what would have become of me, but Henry Wilson died before the month was out, and so, by some strange chance, it never was discovered. If it had been—well, you and I would not have been here to-day. Human justice would have interposed before Divine mercy”—He looked up with a solemn elation which seemed to put self out of his mind. “I might have gone lower and lower! Who can say? It was an easy thing to do, for I was his secretary, and he trusted me. That, of course, was the most horrible part of what I did, the part that now seems to me incomprehensible—the broken trust! Well, of course, I made reparation, as I called it, out of the money he left me. I gave away many times the amount I stole; but it was only because I was scared at the risk I had run, and the thought of it harassed me. It was a sort of expedient morality, you know; a sort of bargain with my conscience for peace of mind. Then, about a year afterwards, I met X——. I heard him preach, and life changed. How extraordinary it seems to look back upon it now! Then I repented. Before, I had only reformed. That was when I entered the divinity school. But just think, Amy, just think of the difference! How life might have gone—yet here I am to-day, your lover, your husband. Oh, the mercy of God!”
He was deeply moved. He got up and walked the length of the room. Amy sat silently looking down at her hands in her lap. When he came back, his eyes were full of peace.
“That is all, dearest; now we will forget it. You know my life as you do your own.”
“Forget it?” she repeated, with a sudden, sobbing laugh, that tore at the man’s heart.
“Amy! dearest! have I shocked you so? Remember, it was twenty-three years ago; I was only a boy. Let me tell you how it was: I was madly in love with a woman; at least, it was not love, but I thought it was; she fascinated me, and”—
“Oh, go on—go on!” she interrupted, hoarsely; “as if I cared about that!”
He tried to take her hand, but she made a pretense of arranging the flowers in her belt; her head was turned a little from him. He leaned forward, with a grave authority to command her attention, took the pansies from her, and held them in his hand.
“I was possessed to marry her. Of course, she would not look at me—a penniless, charity student. But I strained every nerve to win her. It was the old story. She took my flowers, or theatre tickets, or anything I could give her. Curious, the mercenariness of the woman did not revolt me! But I was mad about her. I thought, at last, that if I had money I could give her some jewels she wanted, and perhaps she would accept me. That was how it came about. She took the diamonds, and eloped with a married man two days afterwards.”
As he told the story, the grossness of it all came over him—the offense to the exquisite delicacy of the girl beside him.
“But I ought not to have told you this,” he stammered.
“What?” she said dully. “About the woman? Oh, as if that mattered!” She turned from him sharply, putting the back of her hand against her lips as though to hide their quiver.
Then she burst out: “Oh, why did you tell me? Why? why? Oh, I wish you had not told me!” She shook from head to foot. “But it will make no difference! I will not let it make any difference. I am going to marry you. Only—I never knew you!”
Those most terrible words, those words with which Love destroys itself, came like a blow between the eyes. He grew very pale. “ ‘Not make any difference’?” he repeated, blankly, “why, what difference could it make?”
She stopped crying, suddenly, and stood, panting, steadying herself by her hands upon his breast, and staring at him. There was something almost terrifying in this sudden pause and in her burning look.
“It’s the one thing,” she said, “don’t you see? that lasts. It isn’t like—other things.”
“But it was not I,” he said, mechanically. “Not I, the man you—you thought you knew. It was a boy, twenty-three years ago. Amy, Amy! Twenty-three years ago!”
She did not listen; she kept repeating to herself: “It shall make no difference. I will not let it make any difference.” Alas, it was not for her to say! The difference was made; the jewel crushed under foot is no more a jewel; the rose thrown into the fire is no more a rose. The stained human soul is no more the innocent human soul.
“But you must listen to me, Amy,” he said. “No, I will not speak until you are calm. Sit down. Look at me. Now, listen to what I have to say.” He spoke slowly and gently, as one does to a terrified, unreasonable child.
“Dear, I had forgotten it. So little is it a part of my life that I had forgotten it. When I remembered it last night, it was with a sense of astonishment, a sense of pity for the mad boy who did it. I had no personal shame—it seemed to belong to some one else, whom I watched with sorrow and indignation. I do not believe that to-day, more than twenty years afterwards, I have any business to think