"Oh, forgive me, John! Forgive me! Not that I deserve your forgiveness, but because you pity me."
"I forgave you long ago, Dorothy. You had my full forgiveness before you asked it."
He lifted the weeping girl to her feet and the two clung together in silence. After a pause Dorothy spoke:—
"You have not asked me, John, why I betrayed you."
"I want to know nothing, Dorothy, save that you love me."
"That you already know. But you cannot know how much I love you. I myself don't know. John, I seem to have turned all to love. 'However much there is of me, that much there is of love for you. As the salt is in every drop of the sea, so love is in every part of my being; but John," she continued, drooping her head and speaking regretfully, "the salt in the sea is not unmixed with many things hurtful." Her face blushed with shame and she continued limpingly: "And my love is not—is not without evil. Oh, John, I feel deep shame in telling you, but my love is terribly jealous. At times a jealousy comes over me so fierce and so distracting that under its influence I am mad, John, mad. I then see nothing in its true light; my eyes seem filled with—with blood, and all things appear red or black and—and—oh! John, I pray you never again cause me jealousy. It makes a demon of me."
You may well know that John was nonplussed.
"I cause you jealousy?" he asked in surprise. "When did I—" But Dorothy interrupted him, her eyes flashing darkly and a note of fierceness in her voice. He saw for himself the effects of jealousy upon her.
"That white—white Scottish wanton! God's curse be upon her! She tried to steal you from me."
"Perhaps she did," replied John, smilingly, "of that I do not know. But this I do know, and you, Dorothy, must know it too henceforth and for all time to come. No woman can steal my love from you. Since I gave you my troth I have been true to you; I have not been false even in one little thought."