"
("Yes, yes," her heart cried out, "I believe in him, _because_ he
didn't tell the truth about that letter to Horace." She could have
loved him for that lie.)
He was now at liberty to part with her on that understanding, leaving
her to think him all that was disinterested and honourable and fine.
But he could not do it. Not in the face of her almost impassioned
declaration of belief. At that moment he was ready rather to fall at
her feet in the torture of his shame. And as he looked at her, tears
came into his eyes, those tears that cut through the flesh like
knives, that are painful to bring forth and terrible to see.
"I've not been an honest man, though. I've no right to let you believe
in me."
Her face was sweeter than ever with its piteous, pathetic smile
struggling through the white eclipse of grief.
"What have you done?"
"It's not what I've done. It's what I didn't do. I told you that I
knew the library was going to be sold. I told you that yesterday, and
you naturally thought I only _knew_ it yesterday, didn't you?"
"Well, yes, but I don't see--"
She paused, and his confession dropped into the silence with an awful
weight.
"I knew--all the time."
She leaned back in her chair, the change of bodily posture emphasizing
the spiritual recoil.
"All the time, and you never told me?"
"All the time and I never told you. I'd _almost_ forgotten when you
offered me that secretaryship, but I knew it when I let you engage me;
I knew it before I came down.
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