d had brought on herself the worst
she had to tell, and should she be false, even though he wished it, and
not tell?

She forced the words out in a voice that hardly seemed her own at
first.

"No, we made a mistake; you did, and I did, too. There was
something--something--I wanted to tell you at first, but you wouldn't
let me, and I was glad you wouldn't; but it was all wrong, and now I
have got to tell you, when everything is over, and it can never do any
good." She gave a dry sob, and cast upon him a look of keen reproach,
which he knew he deserved. "I _was_ engaged to him once. Or," she
added, as if she could not bear to see him blench, "he could think so.
It was the year after you were in Pymantoning."

She went on and told him everything. She did not spare herself any fact
that she thought he ought to know, and as she detailed the squalid
history, it seemed to her far worse than it had ever been in her own
thoughts of it.

He listened patiently, and at the end he asked, "Is that all?"

"All?"

"Yes. I wanted to know just how much you have to forgive me." She
looked at him stupefied. "Yes, I ought to have let you tell me all this
before, when you wanted to, at first. But I have been a romantic fool,
and I have made you suffer for my folly. I have left you to think, all
the time, that I might care for this; that I might not know that you
were yourself through it all, or that I could care for you any the less
because of it, when it only makes you dearer to me."

"No!" she said for all protest, and he understood.

"Oh, I don't mean that you were always right in it, or always wise; but
I can truly say it makes no difference with me except to make you
dearer. If I had always had more sense than I had, you would not have
to blame yourself for the only wrong or unwise thing you have done, and
I am really to blame for that."

She knew that he meant her having taken refuge from his apparent
indifference in Dickerson, when she fell below her ideal of herself.
This was what she had thought at the time; it was the thought with
which she had justified herself then, and she could not deny it now.
She loved him for taking her blame away, and she said to strengthen
herself for her doom, "Well, it is all over!"

"No," he said, "why is it over? Don't be worse than I was. Let us be
reasonable about it! Why shouldn't we talk of it as if we were other
people? Do you mean it is all over because you think I must be troubled