"There's Ann," she said simply.
She was surprised it hurt so little to put it into words--the fact that
he loved another woman. But, since the day she had first realised that
he cared for Ann, she had been schooling herself to a certain stoical
resignation. She recognised that she had forfeited her own claim to love
when she had married Dene Hilyard because he had more of this world's
goods than the man to whom she had given her heart, and she felt no actual
jealousy of Ann--only a wistful envy of the girl for whom the love of Eliot
Coventry might yet create the heaven on earth which she herself had thrown
away.
"There's Ann," she said.
For an instant Eliot's face seemed convulsed, twisted into a grim mask of
agony.
"Yes," he said hoarsely. "There's Ann. And because of you, I can't believe
in her."
It was like an accusation flung straight in her face. She shrank back as
though he had struck her. So he cared for Ann--like that.... And because of
what she had done, because of her sin of ten years ago, he would not trust
her--would not trust any woman.
"You make my 'account rendered' a very heavy one," she said unsteadily.
Then, on a note of increasing urgency: "Don't judge Ann--by me, Eliot.
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