Ernestine, for her part, was
curiously exercised in her mind. He had shaken her faith in his
guilt - he had admitted her to his point of view. She judged
herself from his standpoint, and the result was unpleasant. She
had a sudden impulse to tell him the truth, to reveal her identity,
tell him her reasons for concealment. Perhaps her suspicions had
been hasty. Then the personal note in his last speech had produced
a serious effect on her, and all the time she felt that her silence
was emboldening him, as indeed it was.
"The first time I saw you," he went on, "the likeness struck me.
I felt as though I were meeting some one whom I had known all my
life."
She laughed a little uneasily. "And you found yourself instead the
victim of an interviewer! What a drop from the romantic to the
prosaic!"
"There has never been any drop at all," he answered firmly, "and
you have always seemed to me the same as that picture - something
quite precious and apart from my life. It's been a poor sort of
thing perhaps. I came from the people, I never had any education,
I was as rough as most men of my sort, and I have done many things
which I would sooner cut off my right hand than do again. But that
was when I lived in the darkness. It was before you came.
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