第46章

She struggled out of his arms with a cry and recognizing him, drew her figure up to its full height.Her eyes filled with passion, cold and resentful.

He made a gesture.

"Wait!" he cried."Listen."

He laid bare everything--from his finding of the bundle to the evening of the ball.

He was standing by the doorway.A small window in the opposite wall of the low room opened toward the West.Through this a crimson light fell upon his face revealing its pallor, its storm, its struggle for calmness.

She stood a few yards off with her face in shadow.As she had stepped backward, one of her hands had struck against her spinning-wheel and now rested on it; with the other she had caught the edge of the table.From the spinning-wheel a thread of flax trailed to the ground; on the table lay a pair of iron shears.

As he stood looking at her facing him thus in cold half-shadowy anger--at the spinning wheel with its trailing flax--at, the table with its iron shears--at her hands stretched forth as if about to grasp the one and to lay hold on the other--he shudderingly thought of the ancient arbitress of Life and Death--Fate the mighty, the relentless.The fancy passed and was succeeded by the sense of her youth and loveliness.She wore a dress of coarse snow-white homespun, narrow in the skirt and fitting close to her arms and neck and to the outlines of her form.Her hair was parted simply over her low beautiful brow.There was nowhere a ribbon or a trifle of adornment: and in that primitive, simple, fearless revelation of itself her figure had the frankness of a statue.While he spoke the anger died out of her face.But in its stead came something worse--hardness; and something that was worse still--an expression of revenge.

"If I was unfeeling with you," he implored, "only consider! You had broken your engagement without giving any reason; I saw you at the party dancing with Joseph; I believed myself trifled with, I said that if you could treat in that way there was nothing you could say that I cared to hear.I was blind to the truth; I was blinded by suffering.

"If you suffered, it was your own fault," she replied, calm as the Fate that holds the shears and the thread."I wanted to explain to you why I broke my engagement and why I went with Joseph: you refused to allow me.""But before that! Remember that I had gone to see you the night before.You had a chance to explain then.But you did not explain.Still, I did not doubt that your reason was good.I did not ask you to state it.But when Isaw you at the party with Joseph, was I not right, in thinking that the time for an explanation had passed?""No," she replied."As long as I did not give any reason, you ought not to have asked for one; but when I wished to give it, you should have been ready to hear it."He drew himself up quickly.

"This is a poor pitiful misunderstanding.I say, forgive me! We will let it pass.I had thought each of us was wrong--you first, I, afterward.""I was not wrong either first or last!"

"Think so if you must! Only, try to understand me! Amy, you know I've loved you.You could never have acted toward me as you have, if you had not believed that.And that night--the night you would not see me alone--I went to ask you to marry me.I meant to ask you the next night.I am here to ask you now!..."He told her of the necessity that had kept him from speaking sooner, of the recent change which made it possible.He explained how he had waited and planned and had shaped his whole life with the thought that she would share it.She had listened with greater interest especially to what he had said about the improvement in his fortunes.Her head had dropped slightly forward as though she were thinking that after all perhaps she had made a mistake.

But she now lifted it with deliberateness: