Leam, who had not been in bed through the night, was sitting on the sofa
in the remotest and darkest part of the room. She rose as he
entered--rose only, not coming forward to meet him, but standing in her
place silent, pale, yet calm and collected. She did not look at him, but
neither did she blush nor tremble. There was something statuesque,
almost dead, about her--something that was not the same Leam whom he had
known from the first.
He went up to her, both hands held out. She shrank back and folded hers
in each other, still not looking at him.
"Why, Leam, what is it?" he cried in amazement, pained, shocked at her
action. Was she in her right mind? Had she heard of his former
attentions to Adelaide, divined their ultimate meaning, and been seized
with a mad idea of sacrifice and generosity? It must be with Adelaide,
he thought, rapidly reviewing his past. He was absolutely safe about
Violet Cray, who had never known his name; and those later Indian
affairs were dead and as good as buried. What, then, did it mean?
"No, not till you have heard me," said Leam in a low voice. "And never
after."
"My darling! what is it?" he repeated.
"You must not call me dear names: I am unworthy," said Leam. "No,"
checking him as he would have spoken, smiling with a sense of relief
that her craze--if it was a craze--went to the visionary side of her own
unworthiness, and was not due to any knowledge of his misdemeanors, as
she might think them.
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