As she listened and gathered from his words the apprehension of a thing that had hitherto escaped her, her eyes grew wide in sudden horror.
“Is that to be the cost of my deliverance?” she asked him fearfully.
“I trust not,” he replied. “I have something in mind that will perhaps avoid it.”
“And save your own life as well?” she asked him quickly.
“Why waste a thought upon so poor a thing? My life was forfeit already. If I go back to Algiers they will assuredly hang me. Asad will see to it, and not all my sea hawks could save me from my fate.”
She sank down again upon the divan, and sat there rocking her arms in a gesture of hopeless distress.
“I see,” she said. “I see. I am bringing this fate upon you. When you sent Lionel upon that errand you voluntarily offered up your life to restore me to my own people. You had no right to do this without first consulting me. You had no right to suppose I would be a party to such a thing. I will not accept the sacrifice. I will not, Sir Oliver.”
“Indeed, you have no choice, thank God!” he answered her. “But you are astray in your conclusions. It is I alone who have brought this fate upon myself. It is the very proper fruit of my insensate deed. It recoils upon me as all evil must upon him that does it.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to dismiss the matter. Then in a changed voice, a voice singularly timid, soft, and gentle, “it were perhaps too much to ask,” said he, “that you should forgive me all the suffering I have brought you?”
“I think,” she answered him, “that it is for me to beg forgiveness of you.”
“Of me?”
“For my unfaith, which has been the source of all. For my readiness to believe evil of you five years ago, for having burnt unread your letter and the proof of your innocence that accompanied it.”
He smiled upon her very kindly. “I think you said your instinct guided you. Even though I had not done the thing imputed to me, your instinct knew me for evil; and your instinct was right, for evil I am—I must be. These are your own words. But do not think that I mock you with them. I have come to recognize their truth.”
She stretched out her hands to him. “If … if I were to say that I have come to realize the falsehood of all that?”
“I should understand it to be the charity which your pitiful heart extends to one in my extremity. Your instinct was not at fault.”
“It was! It was!”
But he was not to be driven out of his conviction. He shook his head, his countenance gloomy. “No man who was not evil could have done by you what I have done, however deep the provocation. I perceive it clearly now—as men in their last hour perceive hidden things.”
“Oh, why are you so set on death?” she cried upon a despairing note.
“I am not,” he answered with a swift resumption of his more habitual manner. “ ’Tis death that is so set on me. But at least I meet it without fear or regret. I face it as we must all face the inevitable—the gifts from the hands of destiny. And I am heartened—gladdened almost—by your sweet forgiveness.”
She rose suddenly, and came to him. She caught his arm, and standing very close to him, looked up now into his face.
“We have need to forgive each other, you and I, Oliver,” she said. “And since forgiveness effaces all, let … let all that has stood between us these last five years be now effaced.”
He caught his breath as he looked down into her white, straining face.
“Is it impossible for us to go back five years? Is it impossible for us to go back to where we stood in those old days at Godolphin Court?”
The light that had suddenly been kindled in his face faded slowly, leaving it grey and drawn. His eyes grew clouded with sorrow and despair.
“Who has erred must abide by his error—and so must the generations that come after him. There is no going back ever. The gates of the past are tight-barred against us.”
“Then let us leave them so. Let us turn our backs upon that past, you and I, and let us set out afresh together, and so make amends to each other for what our folly has lost to us in those years.”
He set his hands upon her shoulders, and held her so at arm’s length from him considering her with very tender eyes.
“Sweet lady!” he murmured, and sighed heavily. “God! How happy might we not have been but for that evil chance. …” He checked abruptly. His hands fell from her shoulders to his sides, he half-turned away, brusque now in tone and manner. “I grow maudlin. Your sweet pity has so softened me that I had almost spoke of love; and what have I to do with that? Love belongs to life; love is life; whilst I … Moriturus te salutat!”
“Ah, no, no!” She was clinging to him again with shaking hands, her eyes wild.
“It is too late,” he answered her. “There is no bridge can span the pit I have dug myself. I must go down into it as cheerfully as God will let me.”
“Then,” she cried in sudden exaltation, “I will go down with you. At the last, at least, we shall be together.”
“Now here is midsummer frenzy!” he protested, yet there was a tenderness in the very impatience of his accents. He stroked the golden head that lay against his shoulder. “How shall that help me?” he asked her. “Would you embitter my last hour—rob death of all its glory? Nay, Rosamund, you can serve me better far by living. Return to England, and publish there the truth of what you have learnt. Be yours the task of clearing my honour
