"Am I intended to take it
as a rebuke?"
Perhaps the light detachment of her manner jangled some long-silent chord,
roused an echo from the past, for his face darkened.
"You can take it so, if you wish," he said curtly.
She was silent. In that brief question and answer she had covertly appealed
for mercy and had received judgment--the same judgment which had been
pronounced against her years ago. She had never thought it possible
that Eliot would learn to care for her again. She knew the man too well
to believe that he would have any love left to give the woman who had
despoiled him of all a man values--broken his faith, destroyed the ideals
that had once been his. Moreover, she had seen clear down into his soul
that day at Berrier Cove, when Ann had come within an ace of death, and she
knew that on the ruins of the old love a new love was building.
But, deep within her, she had hoped that Eliot's savage bitterness towards
her might have softened with the passage of time--that perhaps he had
learned to tincture his contempt for her with a little understanding and
compassion, allowing something in excuse for youth and for the long,
grinding years of poverty which had ground the courage out of her and
driven her into making that one ghastly mistake for which life had exacted
such a heavy penalty.
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