He hesitated painfully. "Everything I might say seems to be trying to shift the load from my shoulders on to--another's," he said, at last. "It was a mistake--that's all. A mistake for us. Before it began--our marriage--it was different, but afterward--She was very good to me; looked after me and all that, but--Oh, I'm afraid I'm only hurting you the worse by saying all this. You won't, you can't understand. Let it be that it was all my fault. It was, it was. Believe that, please.... And I know you won't want to stay here with me any longer--after this. I quite understand that. A man who--who felt as she wrote it all down here--such a man you wouldn't, you couldn't--" He stopped hopelessly. "I can't bear to have you go," he burst out, impulsively. "Where will you go? Back there to Iowa?" She nodded sorrowfully. "And have no more music? And--and--oh, it's cruel. _Why_ had you to find it out? It didn't matter anyway when it was all done with. Why _did_ you have to know? ... And you haven't any money. You must let me help you. Let me do that--just that. Can't you forget it all enough for that? Surely you've liked me--for what you've liked in me, let me help you. Great heavens, if I thought of you alone out there, without money--_Must_ you go?" Haldane was fast losing control of himself. With an effort he pulled himself together and tried to smile. "You're right to go," he said. "Right. You wouldn't want anything to do with me now." He looked up at her, though loath to meet her eyes. There was a wonderful pity in her face. "Don't!" he cried, sharply, not understanding. "I want to say this," he broke out again, almost roughly. "I never guessed that she knew how I felt toward her. I wasn't cruel or beastly--I was kind. They say that's cruelty, too. I tried--my God! how I tried!--never to let her know the truth. That's all I can say for myself; ... you'd better go." She was so silent that at last he faced her again. She was crying softly, and, it appeared, without bitterness. Haldane stared at her curiously. "I wanted to know that--that last you said," Mrs. Locke gasped, with difficulty. "I--I--I've been thinking it all over in my room. It's very hard to say--please let me go on with it just as I can, I--I've said I wanted to hear that last. But I knew it--in my heart--all the time. I knew you couldn't be cruel to a living thing. And--and--somehow--it changed--things. I've had such a terrible struggle all alone. I've tried to pray over it and--oh, I'm afraid I'm very wrong and very wicked--I almost know I am." Her voice sank to a whisper. "But--oh, Leonard ... somehow I just seemed to feel inside me just how you felt, just how--it was with you those two years. Oh, it's a dreadful thing to say, isn't it? Poor Ida! She was so good to me, and yet sometimes--" The trembling old woman's voice faltered and broke. Haldane's eyes were full of tears. A great light was slowly breaking for him. He dared not speak.