"Listen to me."
"No, I will not listen. I have trusted you too far already. Oh!" piteously, "you who have seen him, and have noticed the beauty, the sweetness of his life, how could you have misjudged him? But," with vehement anger, "your narrow mind could not appreciate his! You lack generosity. You could not grasp the fact that there might be in this wide world such a thing as undiscovered wrong. You condemned without a hearing. Why," growing calmer, "there have been hundreds of cases where the innocent have suffered for the guilty."
"I know it," says Portia, feverishly, taking Dulce's hand and trying to draw her towards her; but the girl recoils.
"Do not touch me," she says. "There is no longer any friendship between us."
"Oh! Dulce, do not say that," entreats Portia, painfully.
"I will say it. All is at an end as far as love between us is concerned. Fabian is part of me. I cannot separate myself from him. His friends are mine. His detractors are mine also. I will not forgive them. I believe him a saint, you believe him defiled, and tainted with the crime of forgery."
She draws her breath quickly; and Portia turns even whiter than before.
"Whereas I protest to you," goes on Dulce, rapidly losing all constraint, and letting her only half-suppressed passion have full sway. "I believe you to be less pure than him, less noble, less self-denying; he would be slow to believe evil of anyone. And this one thing I am resolved on. He shall no longer be left in ignorance of your scorn; he shall not any more spend his affection upon one who regards him with disdain; he shall know the truth before the day dies."
"Have you no pity?" says Portia, faintly.
"Have you none? You condemned him willingly."