"Don't say things that
I have no right to hear!"
A dark red stained Herman's cheek, and the tears came into his eyes.
"No," he returned. "If any one is to be driven away it shall not be
you."
"But why need we trouble the things that are past," she went on, with
wistful eagerness. "Why cannot we accept it all in silence, and be
friends."
He looked at her with a passionate, penetrating glance. She felt a wild
and foolish longing to fling herself upon the floor and embrace his
feet; but the old Puritan training, the resistant fibre inherited from
sturdy ancestors, still did not fail her.
"You have your wife," she hurried on, "your home, your boy. That is
enough. That"--
"That is not enough," he interrupted, with an emphasis, which seemed
stern. "Helen, I shall not talk love to you. I am another woman's
husband. I made a ghastly mistake when I married Ninitta, but it is
done. She loves me; she is happy, and I love"--his voice faltered into
a wonderful softness more eloquent than words,--"I love Nino."
She would not let him go on. She sprang up and ran to him, taking his
hands in hers with a touch that made his blood rush tingling through
his veins.
"Yes," she cried, "you love Nino! Think of that! Think most of all that
whatever you are, good or bad, you are for your son, for Nino! Come!
There is safety for us in that.
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