"But you were not responsible for what you did."
"And there were other robberies? I even tried to steal from you?"
"Yes," she answered again.
"And you wanted to have me submit to an operation? And I would not?"
"Yes."
"And then . . . then you . . . you did it?"
So she explained, feeling that certainty would be less harmful to him
now than a continual struggle to penetrate the curtain of semidarkness
obscuring his memory.
"I took it upon myself," she told him at the end. "I took the chance
that you might die; that it might be I who had killed you. Perhaps I
had no right to do it. But I have succeeded; I have drawn you back
from kleptomania to your own clear moral strength. You will get well,
Rod Norton; you will be an honest man. But I took it upon myself to
take the chances for you. Now . . . do you think that you can forgive
me?"
He appeared to be pondering the matter. When his reply came it was
couched in the form of a question:
"Would you have done it, Virginia . . . if you didn't love me a little
as I love you?"
And her answer comforted him. He was sleeping when the Engles came.
Later came the big wagon, one of Engle's men driving, Ignacio Chavez
and two other Mexicans accompanying on horseback. Virginia had
forgotten nothing.
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