I know enough--things I have stumbled upon--and I have built them up until I see the horror, the blackness.
And I want to feel sure that you, too, see the pity of it all." Her note of subdued passion roused him now to earnestness, and he framed a disavowal of the worst she might have imagined.

He could calm her fears at once, and the lines in his face relaxed at the thought that it was in his power to afford her this relief.
"I married your mother.

There was nothing wrong about it.

It was all straight." "And you thought, oh, you thought I came for that--you believed I came to have you satisfy me of her honor! I never doubted her!" and she lifted her head proudly.

"And that is what you thought I came for ?" The indignation that flashed in her first stammered sentences died falteringly in a contemptuous whisper.
Her words had cut him deep; he turned away aimlessly, fingering some papers on the table beside him.