"Why should I, Mr. Heron?"
"Why? Because you are so constant, so changeless, that you cannot be expected to sympathise with a man who loves a second time," cried Percival, in an exasperated tone. "And yet this love is as sunlight to candlelight, as wine to water! But you will never understand that, you, with your heart given to one man—buried in a grave."
He stopped short; she had half-risen, and made a gesture as if she would have bidden him be silent.
"There!" he said, vehemently. "I am doing it again. I am hurting you, grieving you, as I did once before, when I forgot your great sorrow; and you did right to reprove me then. I know you have hated me ever since. I know you cannot forgive me for the pain I inflicted. It's, of course, of no use to say I am sorry; that is an utterly futile thing to do; but as far as any such feeble reparation is in my power, I am quite prepared to offer it to you. Sorry? I have cursed myself and my own folly ever since."
"You are making a mistake, Mr. Heron," said Angela. She felt as if she could say nothing more.
"How am I making a mistake?" he asked.
"At the time you refer to," she said, in a hurried yet stumbling sort of way, "when you said what you did, I thought it careless, inconsiderate of you; but I have not remembered it in the way that you seem to think; I have not been angry. I have not hated you. There is no need for you to tell me that you are sorry."
"I think there is every need," he said. "Do you suppose that I am going away into the Western wilds without even an apology?"
"It is needless," she murmured.
There was a pause, and then he leaned forward and said in a deeper tone:—