must my unending misery be the greater that I have once
wounded it."

"That consciousness should have no sting for you hereafter. You did
it in utter ignorance. I cannot claim that I was half so ignorant in
my wrong toward you. But surely we may remember that we have once
been friends, and so we may feel that there is full and free
forgiveness between us before we part."

She did not speak. That last word had pierced too deeply to her
heart.

"You do forgive me--do you not?" he said, as if he misunderstood her
silence.

"I thank you--I bless you--I seek _your_ forgiveness," she said.

At these last words he smiled--a smile that had a certain bitterness
in it. Then suddenly his face became rigidly grave.

"If I had not given you my forgiveness, long ago," he said, "I should
like to offer it to you now, at a price. I wish to God that I could."

"What do you mean?" she said, a sweet perplexity upon her face. "What
price have I to pay for anything?"

"Ah, there it is! It may seem brutal of me to put a literal
construction upon what you have used as a figure of speech, but let
the truth come out. You are poor, unprotected, alone, and you ask me
to go and leave you so! God knows it is little enough that I have it
in my power to do, but the possession of money would enable you at
least to live as it becomes you to live. I do not speak of your
title--it is not what you are called, but what you are, that I have
in mind. If you had money, even the small income which I so desire
that you shall accept, your life would be different."

But Bettina looked away from him, and shook her head in the gentle
negation which he knew to be so final.

"How would my life be different?" she said.

"You could make it so."

"In what way?"

"You could travel, for one thing."

"I do not want to travel. I desired it once, and I got my wish. But
with it came a wretchedness that all the travelling in the world
could not carry me away from."

"Then what is to be your life?"

"What you see it now. I do not wish to change it for any other. I
have tried the world and its rewards. There is nothing in them."

Her tone of absolute, unexpectant decision maddened him.

"My God, Bettina!" he exclaimed, too excited to notice that the name
had escaped him. "Are you in earnest? Can you mean it? I wish I could
believe that you did not. But there is a deadly reality about you now
which makes me fear that you will keep your word. That you shoul