confession, apart from reparation, was the refuge of the weak mind.
Having thus decided to bear alone the burden of his secret, he went, early in the morning, and told the woman he loved.
Of course, there is no explanation of this vacillation and indifference to his own judgment, except the mere statement that he was in love.
“Amy is trying on her dress,” Mrs. Paul said, when he was ushered into the library, “so, if you want to see her, you can go home at once. But perhaps you may condescend to talk to me a little while?”
“I must see Amy, please,” he said. He had a way of putting people aside so gently and peremptorily that Mrs. Paul, who was not a yielding person, never dreamed of protesting.
“I’ll tell her. But she really can’t come down for ten minutes. Do you mind waiting?”
“Very much,” he said smiling. “Tell her to come down just as she is, and let me see her frock.”
“Indeed, she shan’t do anything of the sort,” said Mrs. Paul, with indignation; but relented to the extent of letting him have the library to himself, and going upstairs to send the girl to him.
Amy came floating in with a snowy gleam and rustle, and stood before him, bidding him not to dare to touch her; though, indeed, being a mere man, he was far too uncomfortably awed to think of taking this glorious white creature into his poor human arms.
“You are magnificent, but you are not Amy,” he said; “do get on some common clothes. I’m afraid of you.”
“That is as it should be, sir!” she told him. “I shall dress like this every day if it keeps you obedient. If I had had on my wedding-dress last night, you would not have dared not to stay to dinner when I—wanted you.”
Her look, through the mist of tulle, of soft reproach and challenge, was too much for fear, and he boldly kissed her; which made her protest, and fly from further risk of crushing the bravery of her wedding-day. When she came back again, in a blue cotton gown, trig and pretty, with a bunch of pansies in her belt, there was, fortunately, nothing to be hurt by being crushed.
There was a moment of tender and passionate silence. His errand faded from William West’s mind; the reality of life was here! his past was no more to him than the eggshell is to the eagle. So when, later, leaning forward in his chair, holding her hand in his, looking into her pure eyes, he began to speak, it was almost casually. Before the great fact of human love, the question of telling her or not telling her of that old dead and buried sin was suddenly unimportant—they loved each other!
“Dear,” he said, “I’ve come to tell you something. What you said last night about having no reserves put it into my head. I had forgotten it.”
It was characteristic of the man that there was no preamble; his words were simple, and he was perfectly matter-of-fact and unanxious; so much so that Amy laughed.
“Were you a year-old criminal? Well, tell me at once! I may reconsider, you know.”
There was something in the assurance of her gayety that jarred a little, and he said seriously:—
“It is a wrongdoing of my youth, Amy. I’m not sure that it is not selfish to tell you about it; but I can’t bear the feeling of holding anything back from you.”
An answering gravity came into the girl’s face, but she smiled.
“Tell me anything; I am not afraid to hear!”
Her innocent pride gave him a moment of sharp discomfort. Curiously enough, what he had to tell her had not connected itself, in his mind, with personal embarrassment; it had been too remote from himself. He found himself hesitating for a word, and grasping after that indifference to all but Love which he had felt but a moment before.
“Perhaps I am a fool to tell you,” he began; “it may make you unhappy, and”—
A startled look came into Amy’s eyes; then the color flooded up into her face. She lifted her head with a beautiful, imperious gesture, and stopped him with a word.
“I—understand. Don’t tell me. I—understand.” She bit her lip as she spoke, and her eyelids quivered as though the tears had risen suddenly.
“You understand?” he repeated, in a puzzled voice; “do you mean you don’t want me to tell you?”
“William,” she said, in a low voice, “I do not think a woman has any business with a good man’s life in the past; if—he was not good. I am not a young girl. I am old enough to know that a man’s life and a girl’s life are—different; but don’t tell me. I—love you. Don’t tell me.” She trembled as she spoke, and then her eyes sought his, filled with love and grief.
A wave of tenderness made his whole face melt and quiver. He murmured something of his undesert of such love as this:—
“You are not like other women,” he told her, as every lover has told his mistress since the sun first shone on lovers. “That sin, the mean woman does not forgive. And yet it is so much more pardonable than some other sins! More pardonable, dear, than what I want to tell you.”
She drew a quick breath and smiled. “Ah,” she said, “I’m glad it is not that!” Her relief was so apparent that he realized how austerely sweet her face had been as she forgave him.
“Go on and tell me,” she said; “I am not afraid to hear anything now.”
“That would have been the hardest thing to forgive?” he asked her. She flashed a look of pride at him.
“The things I could not forgive, you could not do!”
This made him glow. After all, who would not confess anything, to be met by such confident love as this?
“This happened long ago, Amy; when I was nineteen. I forged a check for five hundred dollars.”
“Forged!” Her lips fell apart; she sat staring at him.
He was holding her hand, lifting it to his lips sometimes, and looking at it as it lay in his. He went on, quietly:—
“It was when I was at college; I needed money; and—poor, desperate, wicked, silly young man—I forged Professor Wilson’s name. I don’t know what I supposed would become of me when it was found out. And I don’t know what would have become of me, but Henry Wilson died before the month was out, and so, by some strange chance, it never was discovered. If it had been—well, you and I would not have been here to-day. Human justice would have interposed before Divine mercy”—He looked up with a solemn elation which seemed to put self out of his mind. “I might have gone lower and lower! Who can say? It was an easy thing to do, for I was his secretary, and he trusted me. That, of course, was the most horrible part of what I did, the part that now seems to me incomprehensible—the broken trust! Well, of course, I made reparation, as I called it, out of the money he left me. I gave away many times the amount I stole; but it was only because I was scared at the risk I had run, and the thought of it harassed me. It was a sort of expedient morality, you know; a sort of bargain with my conscience for peace of mind. Then, about a year afterwards, I met X——. I heard him preach, and life changed. How extraordinary it seems to look back upon it now! Then
