"And mine was the greater injury," she observed. "I know it. There is no apology I can offer that will be effective--so, why try?"
"Don't try!" he exclaimed. "Just let us forget it, and take a fresh start." He leaned forward and took her hand--and she, in sheer amazement, suffered him to retain it. "I am willing to forgive, Stephanie, if you are willing to come back to me. Will you do it, dear?"
For a moment she had the impulse to ask how long this notion had actuated him, and how long he thought that it would last. Then the keen injustice of the taunt came home to her, and with it a sharp sense of just what such an offer meant from _him_. Aside from everything--of blindness when he should have seen, of supineness when he should have acted, of vacillation when he should have known his own mind, of all the other deficiencies of which he was guilty--there yet remained the ever present, ever damning fact that _she_ was a guilty wife; and that he was willing to overlook the past, and to restore her to the place she once had, made all his shortcomings as nothing in comparison. It mattered not how soon he might again change his mind--that was not the present question. He had offered. He was waiting for her answer. She had but to accept--and the thing was done beyond the fear of change.
"Will you do it, Stephanie, dear?" she heard him say again--she did not know how often he had said it.
She released her hand and sat staring down at the rug at her feet. It was a Senna prayer rug, beautiful in coloring and soft as an autumn twilight in the tones, but she was looking back into the past--its lost opportunities and forsaken shrines....
Presently her glance shifted to Lorraine--and lingered, speculatively, appraisingly, as though casting up the balances. It swept him slowly from head to foot, pausing long upon his face--so long, indeed, that he shifted uneasily and smiled in self defence.
"Will you do it, Stephanie, dear?" he repeated.
"What has that to do with the question?" he replied. "Neither do I know that I love you--we must try----"
"I know," she interrupted; "you don't love me--and love is the one thing that could heal the wounds the past two years have made--for us both."
"Do you love that scoundrel Amherst?" he asked.