CONFIDENCE
"My dear Gordon, are you crazy?" Bernard demanded, with an energy which, this time at least, was sufficiently real.
"Very likely I am crazy. I am crazy with disappointment, and the bitterness of what I have lost. Add to that the wretchedness of what I have found!"
"Ah, don't say that, Mr. Wright," Angela begged.
He stood for an instant looking at her, but not heeding her words. "Will you listen to me again? Will you forget the wrong I did you?—my stupidity and folly and unworthiness? Will you blot out the past and let me begin again? I see you as clearly now as the light of that window. Will you give me another chance?"
Angela turned away her eyes and covered her face with her hands. "You do pain me!" she murmured.
"You go too far," said Bernard. "To what position does your extraordinary proposal relegate your wife?"
Gordon turned his pleading eyes on his old friend without a ray of concession; but for a moment he hesitated. "Don't speak to me of my wife. I have no wife."
"Ah, poor girl!" said Angela, springing up from the sofa.
"I am perfectly serious," Gordon went on, addressing himself again to her. "No, after all, I am not crazy; I see only too clearly—I see what should be; when people see that, you call them crazy. Bernard has no right—he must give you up. If you really care for him, you should help him. He is in a very false position; you shouldn't wish to see him in such a position. I can't explain to you—if it were even for my own sake. But Bernard must have told you; it is not possible that he has not told you?"
"I have told Angela everything, Gordon," said Bernard.
244
