Anna interrupted him by laying a soft hand upon his lips.  She had to stretch and strain a little to reach up so far, crouched low there, as she was, quite at his feet.  Her heart was beating very fast as came the time for her confession.  She hoped that he would not be very angry, very greatly horrified.

“No,” she said slowly; “no, we have not quarreled, she has not mistreated me; but—­she will be very angry—­she will not forgive me, when she knows—­”

Kreutzer was affrighted.  There seemed to him to be a hint of dreadful revelations to be made in the soft droop of Anna’s head, the trembling of her little hand in his, the swift ebb and flow of the rich color in the pink satin of her cheeks.

“Anna,” he said, aghast, “what is there for her to know?  Oh, my Anna—­what is there for her to know?  Fear not.  Your old father—­he will understand and will forgive—­will forgive anything in all this world—­no matter what.  Remember that.  Remember that, and tell me, Anna, what is there for Mrs. Vanderlyn to pardon?”

She did not lift her head.  Her eyes flashed up at him in one quick look of terror, but never by an inch did she raise toward her father’s, now, her pale, affrighted face.  “It was a great temptation, father,” she said slowly.  “A very great temptation.”

Now he was alarmed, indeed.  “Anna,” he demanded, in a voice that was not like his own, “what have you done?  What have you done?”

Every horrid thought—­but one—­which could flash into being in the human mind at such a time, rushed into his, in a terrific jumble of mad speculations.

For a moment Anna cowered, alarmed by what a quick glimpse of his face had shown her.  She had never seen a human face so—­not whitened by his fear, but greyed—­greyed as if seared with fire and turned to carven ashes.  She could tell, by that, that he would never, really, forgive her.  Too firmly had his hopes been fixed upon the plans which he had built in many long hours of reflections going back along the years, no doubt, to that far time when she was lying, a mere babe, in her dear mother’s arms.  How ardently she wished, now, at this crisis, that that mother might be there to soften things for her; to turn his wrath, explain, make clear to him the fact that there are impulses too strong for women’s hearts to put aside!

She did not look at him again—­she could not bear to see that face again—­but slowly rose and slowly crossed the little room to the crude table and took from it her handbag, which, when M’riar had cleared off the dinner things, she had replaced where it had been when she had started, first, to lay the table.  As she raised the bag her father’s eyes were fixed upon her in an agony of dread.