"If you knew what, or how, I have suffered! If you only knew—you'd forgive me! If you could understand how I love you now you would take me back, you would say that never in all the world would you find another love like mine! Oh, it isn't too late! It isn't too late! We have our lives still before us; we have both been living on the north side of life too long; we have been missing all the sun, and warmth, and color. And you can save me from myself; you were saving me from myself! With you I could begin over again, from the first!"
He broke away from her then, with a vehemence that she had not looked for in him, but still she went on, feverishly: "Oh, you are strong, where I am faltering and weak. I want to be honest, and good, and upright—but from the first they wouldn't let me! Oh, they wouldn't let me!"
"You have lied to me!" he cried out to her, harshly. "You lied to me from the first. You lied to me in the very hour when I asked you for all your open trust. Your life has been a lie! You are a lie—a living lie!"
She tried to muffle the words with her hand, but his passion swept him on.
"What you are now you'll be to the end! You have gone through life a cheat, an impostor, and you'll be one to the last! Even now you are acting a lie, even now, with me!"
He knew it was not the truth he spoke, but he felt safer after flinging it at her.
"No, no," she cried back. "This is no lie! What woman would come and say what I have said? I couldn't ever act a part with you! I have no one but you—I have no one but you!"
As he flung her from him, in his own sudden terror of himself, she fell back and crouched on his trunk, rocking her frail body weakly back and forth, and sobbing over and over again: "Let me go back with you! Oh, have mercy on me, my own, and let me go back with you!"
Then she crept up to him on her knees, and clung to him with her thin, white hands, her eyes streaming with tears.
"I have friends," she went on, hysterically. "I have power and influence! I will work for you; I will slave for you! I will help you on, to the end; I will make you, my own! Only love me, love me! I need your love! You have taught me what it means, and I must have it! See, see how humbled I am, here, on my knees to you!"