"But if you don't--if you keep your promise----"

"My promise?"

"To say nothing...nothing whatever..." Her strained look
threw a haggard light along the pause.

As she spoke, the whole odiousness of the scene rushed over
him. "Of course I shall say nothing...you know that..." He
leaned to her and laid his hand on hers. "You know I
wouldn't for the world..."

She drew back and hid her face with a sob. Then she sank
again into her seat, stretched her arms across the table and
laid her face upon them. He sat still, overwhelmed with
compunction. After a long interval, in which he had
painfully measured the seconds by her hard-drawn breathing,
she looked up at him with a face washed clear of bitterness.

"Don't suppose I don't know what you must have thought of
me!"

The cry struck him down to a lower depth of self-abasement.
"My poor child," he felt like answering, "the shame of it is
that I've never thought of you at all!" But he could only
uselessly repeat: "I'll do anything I can to help you."

She sat silent, drumming the table with her hand. He saw
that her doubt of him was allayed, and the perception made
him more ashamed, as if her trust had first revealed to him