It explains so much. And I had never guessed—good Heavens! Why, I—I—asked you to look after Andree because——"
"That did not matter very much." Jennifer smiled faintly. "He wrote to me before he went North with you. Just a few lines, but they made the matter clear. I mean—they did not palliate it. He has never tried to do that with anything in his life."
Tempest leaned his elbows on the mantel-shelf, pressing his temples with his fingers. This man who had lived with him daily, for weeks, for months, for years, had had this in his heart all the while.
"And—and his evidence at the trial?" he said.
"He did not mind what people said of himself. He tried to make it easy for me. And he would not make excuses for what he had done to me. He had done it, and he let me know it. He—he used that work as a weapon to—to fight himself with in part. And—and he would not let me think him better than he was."
Tempest nodded. He knew that love can be as merciless as hate. Dick would have Jennifer's love and his bold temper would insist that he had it in spite of what she knew of him.
"And he knew that he left you to—this," he said slowly.
Jennifer did not answer. Memories were too keenly sharp. The thoughts of both were with the man somewhere out along the far trails in the silence.
The fire fell together with a crash, and Jennifer looked up.
"Have you forgiven him for what he did to you?" she asked.
"I thought I had. I know now that I had not. I can guess a little at what pain would do to a man of his temperament. If I had only known—but he would not tell me, of course. He could not."
"But you can forgive him now?"
"I have already forgiven him officially," Tempest smiled a little bitterly. "And I can't cease to care for him. I don't know if I shall ever feel the same way towards him again. He did a great wrong, not to me, but to her."
"No one could have expected her to care."
