hat that was your word,--the harshest word that you could
use in all the language."

"I did not mean to be harsh. If I used it, I will beg your pardon.
Only let there be an end of it. As we think so differently about life
in general, it was better that we should not be married. But that
is settled, and why should we go back to words that were spoken in
haste, and which are simply disagreeable?"

"I have come to know whether it is settled."

"Certainly. You settled it yourself, Oswald. I told you what I
thought myself bound to tell you. Perhaps I used language which I
should not have used. Then you told me that I could not be your
wife;--and I thought you were right, quite right."

"I was wrong, quite wrong," he said impetuously. "So wrong, that I
can never forgive myself, if you do not relent. I was such a fool,
that I cannot forgive myself my folly. I had known before that I
could not live without you; and when you were mine, I threw you away
for an angry word."

"It was not an angry word," she said.

"Say it again, and let me have another chance to answer it."

"I think I said that idleness was not,--respectable, or something
like that, taken out of a copy-book probably. But you are a man who
do not like rebukes, even out of copy-books. A man so thin-skinned
as you are must choose for himself a wife with a softer tongue than
mine."

"I will choose none other!" he said. But still he was savage in his
tone and in his gestures. "I made my choice long since, as you know
well enough. I do not change easily. I cannot change in this. Violet,
say that you will be my wife once more, and I will swear to work for
you like a coal-heaver."

"My wish is that my husband,--should I ever have one,--should work,
not exactly as a coal-heaver."

"Come, Violet," he said,--and now the look of savagery departed from
him, and there came a smile over his face, which, however, had in it
more of sadness than of hope or joy,--"treat me fairly,--or rather,
treat me generously if you can. I do not know whether you ever loved
me much."

"Very much,--years ago, when you were a boy."

"But not since? If it be so, I had better go. Love on one side only
is a poor affair at best."

"A very poor affair."

"It is better to bear anything than to try and make out life with
that. Some of you women never want to love any one."

"That was what I was saying of myself to Laura but the other day.
With some women it is so easy. With others it