But for a long, long while she permitted no more than
that. I don't know exactly what made me stick to her. I used to go away,
but I always came back. I couldn't give her up. And at last--twelve years
after Green's disappearance--I won her over. She promised to marry me.
The very day afterwards, that scoundrel Green came back! And her
martyrdom began again."
"Oh, Edward, my dear!" Vera's hand went up to his face, stroking,
caressing. The suppressed misery of his voice was almost more than she
could bear. "How you suffered!" she whispered.
He was silent for a moment or two, controlling himself. "It's over now,"
he said then. "Thank God, it's a long time over! She died--less than a
year after--when Jack and Robin were born. Her husband fell over the
cliff on the same night in a fit of drunkenness and was killed. That's
all the story. You know the rest. I'm sorry--I'm very sorry--I hadn't the
decency to tell you before we married."
"You--needn't be sorry, dear," she said very gently.
He looked at her. "Do you mean that, Vera? Do you mean it makes no
difference to you?"
She met his eyes with a shining tenderness in her own that gave her a
womanliness which he had never seen in her before.
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