Her heart forgave
him, however, and she wished him to know it, so without lifting
her head she held out her hand in the place of the words she could
not trust herself to utter. He seized it eagerly, and it so trembled
and throbbed in his grasp that it made him think of a wounded bird
that he once had captured.
"I take your hand, Miss Mayhew," he said earnestly, "not as a sign
of truce between us, but as a token of forgiveness, and the pledge
of reconciliation and friendship. Your brave truth-telling to-night
has atoned for your past. Please give me a chance at least to try
to atone for mine."
His only reply was a faint pressure from her hand and then she sped
up the stairway. He did not see her again till she came down to
breakfast the following morning, when she treated him with a quiet,
distant, well-bred courtesy that did not suggest the sobbing girl
who had fled from him the evening before, much less the despairing,
desperate woman who had given him the drug with which she had
intended to end her existence. They who see conventional surfaces
only know but little of life.
Truthful as she was trying to be, she was puzzling him more than
ever, although he was giving a great deal of thought to the problem.
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