So let us blot them out for ever.
Come to me, Catherine, and help me to forget."
She looked at him with strained eyes.
"Philip," she said, "I must understand you. I must understand what has
made you the man you are."
"Fifteen years in hell has done it," he answered, fiercely. "Not even
my memory shall ever take me back."
"If I marry you," she said, "remember that I marry your past as well as
your future. And there are things--which need explanation."
"Well?"
"You have been married."
"She is dead."
"You have a son."
He reeled as though he had been struck, and the silence between them was
as the silence of tragedy.
"You see," she continued, "I am bound to ask you to lift the curtain a
little. Fate or instinct, or whatever you may like to call it, has led
me a little way. I am not afraid to know. I have seen too much of life
to be a hard judge. But you must hold out your hand and take me a
little further."
"I cannot."
She held him tightly. Her voice trembled a little. "Dear, you
must. I am not an exacting woman, and I love you too well to be a
hard judge of anything you might have to tell me.
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