She'd never thought it before. Now she realized
that it was true. He was as guiltless of premeditation on that night as
she. If he had yielded to a rush of passion, even while his other
instincts felt outraged by the things she had done, hadn't she yielded
too, without ever having tried to tell him certain material facts that
might change his feeling? They'd both been victims, if one cared to put
it like that, of an accident; had ventured, incautiously, into the rim
of a whirlpool whose irresistible force they both knew.
She fought the realization down with a frantic repression. It wasn't--it
couldn't be true! Why hadn't she seen it was true before? Why must the
reflection have come at a moment like this, while he sat there, across
the table from her in a public room, laboriously apologizing?
The formality of his phrases got stiffer and finally congealed into a
blank silence.
Finally she said, with a gasp: "I have something to ask you to--forgive
me for. That's for leaving you to find out--where I was, the way you
did.
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