Page:Short Stories (1912).djvu/39

32 "She looked so pale, so soft, so womanly, in the moonlight, dressed in light muslin stuff—scarcely looking real—just a little thing like a bunch of flowers for a bonnet, and a thin lace shawl round her, which had fallen upon her waist and hung there.

"Then she kissed me a hundred times—great, long, lingering kisses. Asked me, did I love her?—would I swear to love her always?—never leave her? Could I forgive her faults?—she would be so true to me—would love—did love me with all her heart and soul.

"Harry, did you ever think a woman loved you? It's rough, old man—cursed rough to find out you were wrong.

"Then she talked long and kindly to me; and at last said, with tears in those big, dark eyes, and in her pretty little broken English:

"'Could you forgive anything in me—anything I had kept from you?'

"She'd an eager, pained look in her face, and she hardly breathed. I thought it was a foolish girl's question. Answered, 'Yes.'

"There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel-path, and the shrill laughter of a little child.

"Tiens—Bebe—tiens."

It was her mother's voice!

"For a moment the girl seemed pondering—looking into the future or the past—I knew not which. But suddenly she staggered back, and clasping her hands over her face, cried out—Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!

"It was the Past!!!

"Harry, I'd sooner die a hundred deaths than feel again the pain that shot through my heart just then.

"She fell and fainted on the grass.

"I saw it all. I think there's murder in every man's soul on earth. I knelt over her for a moment. It was in mine then, I knew.

"The horrid, damning, bitter truth, was plain. I thought my head would burst; blood spurted from my