d, her first voluntary action made
me feel that she remembered. With a cry which was like a cry of
horror--with a strength which I doubt if I could have resisted if I had
tried--she thrust me back from her. I saw merciless anger in her eyes;
I saw merciless contempt on her lips. She looked me over, from head to
foot, as she might have looked at a stranger who had insulted her.

"You coward!" she said. "You mean, miserable, heartless coward!"

Those were her first words! The most unendurable reproach that a woman
can address to a man, was the reproach that she picked out to address to
Me.

"I remember the time, Rachel," I said, "when you could have told me that
I had offended you, in a worthier way than that. I beg your pardon."

Something of the bitterness that I felt may have communicated itself
to my voice. At the first words of my reply, her eyes, which had been
turned away the moment before, looked back at me unwillingly. She
answered in a low tone, with a sullen submission of manner which was
quite new in my experience of her.

"Perhaps there is some excuse for me," she said. "After what you have
done, is it a manly action, on your part, to find your way to me as
you have found it to-day? It seems a cowardly experiment, to try an
experiment on my weakness for you. It seems a cowardly surprise, to
surprise me into letting you kiss me. But that is only a woman's view. I
ought to have known it couldn't be your view. I should have done better
if I had controlled myself, and said nothing."

The apology was more unendurable than the insult. The most degraded man
living would have felt humiliated by it.

"If my honour was not in your hands," I said, "I would leave you this
instant, and never see you again. You have spoken of what I have done.
What have I done?"

"What have you done! YOU ask that question of ME?"

"I ask it."

"I have kept your infamy a secret," she answered. "And I have suffered
the consequences of concealing it. Have I no claim to be spared the
insult of your asking me what you have done? Is ALL sense of gratitude
dead in you? You were once a gentleman. You were once dear to my mother,
and dearer still to me----"

Her voice failed her. She dropped into a chair, and turned her back on
me, and covered her face with her hands.

I waited a little before I trusted myself to say any more. In that
moment of silence, I hardly know which I felt most keenly--the sting
which her contempt had planted