"You're all so ready to call on God to forgive! Is forgiveness God's only? Will none of you forgive for yourselves? Or are you so righteous that you can't do what God must?"
I sprang up and came to her.
"Forgive?" I cried in a low voice. "Ay, I'll forgive. Don't talk of forgiveness to me. I came to love."
"To love? Now?" Her eyes grew wide in wonder, amusement, and delight.
"Yes," said I.
"You loved the gem; you'd love the pebble? Simon, Simon, where is Madame your mother, where my good friend the Vicar? Ah, where's your virtue, Simon?"
"Where yours shall be," I cried, seizing and covering her hands in mine. "Where yours, there mine, and both in love that makes delight and virtue one." I caught a hand to my lips and kissed it many times. "No sin comes but by desire," said I, pleading, "and if the desire is no sin, there is no sin. Come with me! I will fulfil all your desire and make your sin dead."
She shrank back amazed; this was strange talk to her; yet she left her hand in mine.
"Come with you? But whither, whither? We are no more in the fields at Hatchstead."
"We could be again," I cried. "Alone in the fields at Hatchstead."