"My dear Frances," I replied, "I find no fault with you. I am sorry you had to do it, but I know it could not be avoided. You were helpless against an overpowering motive. I am sorry for you, yet I admire you more than ever before, because of your recklessness. I have always thought you were cold, or at least that you were wise enough to keep yourself cool, but now I know that beneath your beauty there is a soul that can burn, a heart that can yearn, and a reckless disregard of consequences that on occasion may make a blessed fool of you. It is such women as you who keep alive the spark of Himself which God first breathed into man. I do not blame you. I pity you, and am lost in wondering what will come of it all."
After a long pause, she spoke, sighing: "Although you may not understand what I mean, there was a great deal of right as well as wrong in what I did. I owed to his love, which I knew to be true, an acknowledgment of mine, but more, I had wronged him grievously, and it was right that I should make what poor amends I could. But right or wrong, I did what I had to do, and I do not intend to blame myself, nor to hear blame from any one else. I am perfectly willing that the whole world should know what I have done--that is, I should be were it not for father."
"Again I say I do not blame you," I returned, "though I wish sincerely you had not gone."
"Why did you follow me, and how did you know where I had gone?" asked Frances.
I told her of my visit to her father's house and how, upon my failure to find her there, I went to the Old Swan.
"I thought it would be better that you should leave the Old Swan with me than alone," I said. "It would have been better had you taken me with you."
"Would you have gone with me, knowing my errand?" she asked.
"Yes, gladly," I answered. "When a woman deliberately makes up her mind to do a thing of this sort, she does it sooner or later, despite heaven, earth, or the other place to the contrary. I should have gained nothing by opposing you; I could at least have given color of propriety by going with you."
We walked up Thames Street till we came to the neighborhood of Baynard's Castle, where we took boat and went to Whitehall, each of us in silent revery all the way.