"I was drawn into it. I couldn't help it. One afternoon in my office after the trial. Then she kept after me. The thought of you has been like knives in me. I've loved you all through it and hated myself for thinking of you, dragging you into it. I dragged the thought of you down with me. But she wouldn't let me go. God, I could kill her now. I broke away after weeks. She got somebody else. I've been living in hell ever since--on account of you. I'm unclean and can't love you any more. If it hadn't been for my going across I'd not have come to you. But the war's given me my chance. I can't explain it. I went in to--to wipe it out. But I had to find you and tell you. I didn't want to think of dying and having insulted you and not ..." He stopped, overcome. Rachel was nodding her head. She must make an answer to this. It was a riddle asking an answer. "For God's sake, Rachel, don't look like that. Oh, you're so clean and pure. I can't tell you. You're like a star shining and me in the mud. You've always hated me. But it's different now. I'm going to France to die. I don't want to live. If you forgive me it'll be easier. That's why I had to talk, Rachel, forgive me. And then it won't matter what happens." She let him take her hand. It was an easy way to make an answer. A desire to giggle had to be overruled. The words he had spoken became absurd little manikins of words, bowing at each other, striking idiotic postures before her. But he had done something and for some astounding reason wanted her to forgive him for what he had done. He was a fool. An impossible fool. He sat and looked like a fool. Not even a man. Hazlitt raised her hand to his face. Tears fell on it. Rachel felt them crawling warmly over her fingers. They were too intimate. "You make me feel almost clean again. Your hand's like something clean and pure. If I come back...." He stared at her in desperation. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten his intention to die in France. He recalled Pauline. Was he sorry? No. It was over. Not his fault. All this to Rachel was a ruse. Clever way to get her sympathy. Not quite. But he felt better. He became incomprehensible to Rachel. The things he had said--his weeping, gulping--all part of an incomprehensible business. She nodded her head and looked serious. It was something that had to do with a far-away world. "Good-bye. Remember, I love you. And I'll come through clean because of you...." She held out her hand and said, "Good-bye." But he didn't go. Now he was completely a fool. Now there was something so completely foolish about him that she must laugh. The light in his face detained her laughter. "You forgive me ... for ..." She nodded her head again. It seemed to produce a magical effect--this nodding of her head up and down. His eyes brightened and he appeared to grow taller. "Then if I die, I'll go to heaven."