She drew a deep breath and raised her head proudly.
“Not for the war,” he said quickly, with a gesture which seemed to wave aside her pride and showed her how well he had understood her triumph at the admission seemingly implied in his words. “I am a Northern man, and I believe with my whole soul that the North was right. I believe in the cause for which my father died. Only I see now that if he had lived in the South, the same spirit would have carried him into the Confederate army.”
“But for what should you ask pardon, if the North was in the right?”
“For myself; for not understanding—for being so dull all these years that I have lived with a wife faithful in her heart to the South and too loyal to me to speak. We in the North have forgiven, and we think that the South should forget. It has come over me to-day how easy it is for the conquerors to forgive and how hard that must be for the conquered.”
“You do not understand even now,” she said, her voice low with feeling. “Because we are conquered we can forgive; but we should be less than human to forget.”
The room was very still for a little, and then, following out her thought, she said as if in wonder: “And you, a Northerner, have felt all this!”
He shook his head, with a little smile.
“It is perhaps too much to ask,” returned he, “that you Southern women should realize that even a Northerner is still human.”
“Yes, yes; but to feel our suffering, to see—”
“It has always been facing me, I understand now, in my wife’s eyes—the immeasurable pathos of a people beaten in a struggle they felt to be right; but she had been so happy otherwise, and she never spoke of it.”