The Immortal Moment Part 39

"I haven't told you the truth. I lied."

"When?" he said sternly.

"Just now. When I told you that I didn't care for you."

"Well?"

"Sit down--here, on the sofa. I'll try and tell you."

He sat down beside her, but not near. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, and her head propped on her clenched hands. She did not look at him as she spoke.

"I said I didn't care, because I thought that was the easiest way out of it. Easiest for you. So much easier than knowing the truth."

He smiled grimly.

"Well, you see how easy it's been."

"Yes." She paused. "The truth isn't going to be easy either."

"Let's have it, all the same, Kitty."

"You're going to have it." She paused again, breathing hard. "Have you never wondered why the people here avoided me? You know they thought things."

"As if it mattered what they thought."

"They were right. There _was_ something."

She heard him draw a deep breath. He, too, leaned forward now, in the same att.i.tude as she, as if he were the partic.i.p.ator of her confession, and the accomplice of her shame. His face was level with hers, but his eyes looked straight past her, untainted and clear.

"What if there was?" he said. "It makes no difference."

She turned her sad face to his.

"Don't you know, Robert? Don't you know?"

He frowned impatiently.

"No, I don't. I don't want to."

"You'd rather think I didn't care for you?"

His face set again in its tortured, dumb look.

"You shan't think that of me."

She leaned back again out of his sight, and he presented to her his shoulder, thrust forward, and his profile, immovable, dogged, and apparently unheeding.

"It's because I cared for you that I couldn't tell you the truth. I tried and couldn't. It was so difficult, and you _wouldn't_ understand.

Then Wilfrid Marston said I must--I had to tell you."

He threw himself back and turned on her.

"What had Marston to do with it?"

Her voice and her eyes dropped.

"You see, he knew."

"I see."

He waited.

"I couldn't tell you."

His silence conveyed to her that he listened since she desired it, that he left it to her to tell him as much or as little as she would, and that thus he trusted her.

"I was afraid," she said.

"What? Afraid of _me_, Kitty?"

"I thought it would make you not care for me."

"I don't think anything you can tell me will make any difference."

"You said yourself it would. You said you wouldn't marry me if I wasn't nice."

He looked up impatient and surprised.

"But we've been through all that," he said.

"No, we haven't. When I said I wasn't nice I meant there were things I----"

"Well?"

"I--I wasn't married to Charley Tailleur."

He took it in silence; and through the silence she let it sink in.

"Where is the fellow?" he asked presently.

"He's dead. I told you _that_."

"I'd forgotten."

There was another silence.

"Did you care for him very much, Kitty?"