esently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and
from this position she crouched in a heap.

"In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry
mouth. "I have forgiven you for the same!"

And, as he did not answer, she said again--

"Forgive me as you are forgiven! _I_ forgive YOU, Angel."

"You--yes, you do."

"But you do not forgive me?"

"O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one
person; now you are another. My God--how can forgiveness meet such
a grotesque--prestidigitation as that!"

He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into
horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.

"Don't--don't! It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked. "O have
mercy upon me--have mercy!"

He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.

"Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out. "Do
you know what this is to me?"

He shook his head.

"I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy! I have
thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall
be if I do not! That's what I have felt, Angel!"

"I know that."

"I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self! If it is
I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It
frightens me! Having begun to love you, I love you for ever--in all
changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more.
Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?"

"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."

"But who?"

"Another woman in your shape."

She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive
foreboding in former times. He looked upon her as a species of
imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one. Terror was
upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her
mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible
sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he
stepped forward, thinking she was going to fall.

"Sit down, sit down," he said gently. "You are ill; and it is
natural that you should be."

She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look
still upon her face, and her eyes such as to make his flesh creep.

"I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?" she asked
helplessly. "It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved,
he says."

The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself