--here
is your handkerchief; take it with you."

He held it to her, but yet she lingered; hesitated, and appeared to
have some inward struggle--at length she said; "You have lost your
jacket, and by my fault; and I know that all the money for the oranges
was in it. I did not think of this till afterwards. I cannot replace
it now, we have not so much at home;--or if we had, it would be
mother's;--but this I have; this silver cross. That painter left it on
the table, the day he came for the last time--I have never looked at it
all this while, and do not care to keep it in my box; if you were to
sell it? It must be worth a few piastres, mother says. It might make up
the money you have lost; and if not quite, I could earn the rest by
spinning at night, when mother is asleep."

"Nothing will make me take it;" he said shortly; pushing away the
bright new cross, which she had taken from her pocket.

"You must," she said; "how can you tell how long your hand may keep you
from your work? There it lies; and nothing can make me so much as look
at it again."

"Drop it in the sea, then."

"It is no present I want to make you, it is no more than is your due,
it is only fair."

"Nothing from you can be due to me, and hereafter when we chance to
meet, if you would do me a kindness, I beg you not to look my way. It
would make me feel you were thinking of what I have done. And now good
night, and let this be the last word said."

She laid the handkerchief in the basket, and also the cross, and closed
the lid. But when he looked into her face, he started;--great heavy
drops were rolling down her cheeks; she let them flow unheeded.

"Maria Santissima!" he cried. "Are you ill?--You are trembling from
head to foot!"

"It is nothing," she said; "I must go home;" and with unsteady steps
she was moving to the door, when suddenly a passion of weeping overcame
her, and leaning her brow against the wall, she fell into a fit of
bitter sobbing. Before he could go to her, she turned upon him
suddenly, and fell upon his neck.

"I cannot bear it," she cried, clinging to him as a dying thing to
life--"I cannot bear it, I cannot let you speak so kindly, and bid me
go, with all this on my conscience. Beat me! trample on me, curse me!
Or if it can be that you love me still, after all I have done to you,
take me and keep me, and do with me as you please; only do not send me
so away!"--She could say no more for sobbing.

Speechless, he held he