He laughed softly. "Dear child--she doesn't exist. She doesn't exist." He
swept her out of existence with a gesture of his hand. "Not for me at any
rate."

The emphasis was lost upon her. "It's all nonsense to talk in that way.
If she doesn't exist for you, you shouldn't have gone near her, you
shouldn't have sat talking--to her."

"What do you suppose we were talking about?"

"I don't know. I don't want to know. I saw and heard enough."

"Look here, Anne. You wanted me to be rude to her, didn't you? I _was_
rude. I was brutal. She had to remind me that she was a woman. By heaven,
I'd forgotten it. If you're always to be going back on that--"

"I'm not going back. She has come back."

"It doesn't matter. She doesn't exist. What difference does she make?"

She rose for better delivery of what she had to say.

"She makes the whole difference. It's not that I'm afraid of her. I don't
think I am. I believe that you love me."

"Ah--if you believe that--" He came nearer.

"I do believe it. It's to me that it makes the difference. I must be
honest with you. It's not that I'm afraid. It is--I think--that I'm
disgusted."

He lowered his eyes and moved from her uneasily.

"I was horrified enough when I first knew of it, as you know. You know,
too, that I forgave you, and that I forgot. That was because I didn't
realise it. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't before I had seen her.
Now I have seen her, and I know."

"What do you know?" he said coldly.

"The awfulness of it."

"Do you! Do you!"

"Yes--and if you had realised it yourself--But you don't, and your not
realising it is what shocks me most."

"I don't realise it?" His smile, this time, was grim. "I should think I
was in a better position for realising it than you."

"You don't realise the shame, the sin of it"

"Oh, don't I?" He turned to her, "Look here, whatever I've done, it's all
over. I've taken my punishment, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. But
you can't go on for ever repenting. It wears you out. It seems to me
that, after all this time, I might be allowed to leave off the sackcloth
and brush the ashes out of my hair. I want to forget it if I can. But you
are never--never--going to forget it. And you are going to make me
remember it every day of my life. Is that it?"

"It is not." She could not see herself thus hard and implacable. She had
vowed that there was no duty that she would omit; and it was her duty to
forgive; if possibl