ough his fingers, as he held
them over his face! I had been on the point of speaking. I sat down again
in silence.

"Say what you want of me. Tell me what you wish me to do." Those were his
first words. He spoke them without moving his hands; so quietly, so
sadly, with such hopeless sorrow, such uncomplaining resignation in his
voice, that I, who had entered that room, hating him, rose again, and
went round to his chair. I--who a minute ago, if I had had the strength,
would have struck him down on the floor at my feet--laid my hand on his
shoulder, pitying him from the bottom of my heart. That is what women
are! There is a specimen of their sense, firmness, and self-control!

"Be just, Nugent," I said. "Be honorable. Be all that I once thought you.
I want no more."

He dropped his arms on the table: his head fell on them, and he burst
into a fit of crying. It was so like his brother, that I could almost
have fancied I, too, had mistaken one of them for the other. "Oscar over
again," I thought to myself, "on the first day when I spoke to him in
this very room!"

"Come!" I said, when he was quieter. "We shall end in understanding each
other and respecting each other after all."

He irritably shook my hand off his shoulder, and turned his face away
from the light.

"Don't talk of understanding _me,_" he said. "Your sympathy is for Oscar.
He is the victim; he is the martyr; he has all your consideration and all
your pity. I am a coward; I am a villain; I have no honor and no heart.
Tread Me under foot like a reptile. _My_ misery is only what I deserve!
Compassion is thrown away--isn't it?--on such a scoundrel as I am?"

I was sorely puzzled how to answer him. All that he had said against
himself, I had thought of him in my own mind. And why not? He _had_
behaved infamously--he _was_ a fit object for righteous indignation. And
yet--and yet--it is sometimes so very hard, however badly a man may have
behaved, for women to hold out against forgiving him, when they know that
a woman is at the bottom of it.

"Whatever I may have thought of you," I said, "it is still in your power,
Nugent, to win back my old regard for you."

"Is it?" he answered scornfully. "I know better than that. You are not
talking to Oscar now--you are talking to a man who has had some
experience of women. I know how you all hold to your opinions because
they are your opinions--without asking yourselves whether they are right
or wrong. There are m