Do you want to make me
believe that his sympathy was pretended, that he deliberately planned--
something I have no word to express--and would have carried out his
plan absolutely in cold blood, without a spark of affection for me? It
would be hard to believe it of any man; it is impossible to believe it
of him. He is a man of strong passions, if you will, but of noble
purpose; and if I make a sacrifice for him, he will be making one for
me also. He may have been betrayed at times by grief, or other mental
pain, which weakened his moral nature for the moment, and left him at
the mercy of bad impulses; but I can believe such impulses were
isolated, and any action they led him into was bitterly repented of;
and no one will ever make me alter my conviction that I wronged him
when I doubted him, even for a moment."
"This is all very well, Ideala," I said, trying not to irritate her by
direct opposition, "if you appeared to him as you appear to me. Do you
think you did? Was there anything in your conduct that might have given
him a low estimate of your character to begin with? Anything that might
have led him to doubt your honesty, and think, when you made your
confession, that you were trying to get up a little play in which you
intended him to take a leading part? That you merely wished to ease
your mind from some inevitable sense of shame in wrong-doing by finding
an excuse for yourself to begin with--an excuse by which you would
excite his interest and sympathy, and save yourself from his contempt?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "could he--could any one--think such a thing
possible?"
"Such things are being done every day, Ideala, and a man of the world
would naturally be on his guard against deception.
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