"No. Why should I? You had trouble enough with me!"
"Trouble!" the girl says passionately; and at the sudden change in her voice he raises his head. "Do you forget it was through my fault you were suffering—that if I had not acted so foolishly that night you would not have been shot? Oh, I think of it sometimes till it almost turns my brain!"
It is an exquisite April day, the air is keen and sweet here in the heart of the old-fashioned garden, full of the odor of budding leaves and freshly-turned earth, mingled with the perfume of the great lilac-trees, which are one mass of bloom.
To Honor's Celtic beauty-loving nature such a day as this is full of delights; it soothes her.
"If you have forgotten me," she says more calmly, "for all the pain I brought upon you, I have never forgiven myself."
"I don't know that I have forgiven you," he says, looking at her almost sternly. "There are things a man like me finds it hard to forgive; but as for that stray bullet—it was a mere accident—I have never blamed you in the least for that."
"Then what else had you to forgive me for?"
He laughs, and moves a little way from her—a restless black figure among all his morning freshness.
"Oh, we won't talk of it!" he says, almost awkwardly. "I was a fool to come back, though, and, by Jove, I ought to have known it!"
"No, you are not a fool," the girl answers bitterly; "but you are certainly the worst-tempered man I ever met."